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The Soviet Transition from Socialism to Capitalism: Worker Control and Economic Bargaining in the Wood Industry*

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The Soviet Transition from Socialism to Capitalism: Worker Control and Economic Bargaining in the Wood Industry* THE SOVIET TRANSITION FROM SOCIALISM TO CAPITALISM: WORKER CONTROL AND ECONOMIC BARGAINING IN THE WOOD INDUSTRY* MICHAELBURAWOY PAVELKROTOV Ur~i~~ersityof California, Berkeley Russian Academy of Sciet~ces Analyses oftlze transition from state socialisnz to capitalism @picallyfocus on political im- pedimerlrs and underesritnate tlle economic obsracles to economic rransformatior1. Based or1 a c,ase srudy c?f'theSoviet ~'oodindusrr-y, we argue tlzur there Hill he no economic tr.ansition so long as enterprises rerain two hisroric features, nanzely anarchy in pr.oduction and bar- qainit~gin exrernal r.elarions. Far. jtom consrituting a re~~olution,tlze witllerirlg away of the party srate has esaggerared rlle parhologies of'rhe old econotnic order. Barrer has hecome nzo1.e inzpor.tant, conglonzerates ha1.e strengrhened their monopoly and ~wrkers1la1.e great- er conrr.ol of tlze shop floor. If there is a nzolbemenrto~sar.d a nzar.ket economy at all, it is to~sar.da jb1.m of merchant capitalisnz rlzut deepens economic under.de~>elol~nzet~tand tlz~~arts tlze rise of nzodern bourgeois capiralism. hereas for the first half of the twentieth ther too weak or where it has been strong it has Wcentury socialism was regarded as a real advanced its interests within capitalism rather than alternative to capitalism, now it appears to be no against it. The forces of international capitalism more than a will-o'-the-wisp. In advanced capi- have conspired to defeat attempts to install so- talism. the obstacles to the transition to socialism cialism through economic strangulation or direct have been multiple and diverse: capitalism has political intervention. Finally. the unattractiveness been able to overcome the crises it generates by of existing forms of socialism and the lack of plau- continually revolutionizing itself as its epicenter sible socialist alternatives have made the project- shifts from nation to nation: the state has effec- ed transition utopian. tively orchestrated economic relations and incor- In contrast, the conditions for the transition porated different groups into the capitalist order. from state socialism to capitalism are propitious. In particular, the working class, the supposed First, far from overcoming the crises it generat- agent of the transition to socialism, has failed to ed, Soviet state socialism succumbed to economic become a revolutionary class - it has been ei- stagnation. There is general agreement that the Soviet economy began to decline in the early " Direct all correspondence to Michael Burawoy, 1970s, a decline from which it never recovered. Department of Sociology, University of California, Second, the party state not only failed to effec- Berkeley, CA 94720. We would like to thank the tively coordinate the economy, but in the Soviet managers and workers at Polar Furniture as well as all the other people we interviewed in connection with Union, at least, it also failed to develop adequate this study. We are particularly grateful to the Trade auxiliary markets that would fill the "functional Union Federation of the Republic of the North and to gaps" left by planning. Third, the Soviet regime Dr. Tamara Kalyanova for support throughout the had limited success in eliciting the active con- research. In addition to the ASR editor and two anon- sent of subordinate groups, including the work- ymous referees we thank Kathryn Hendley, Neil Flig- ers but more importantly intellectuals, who often stein, Erik Wright and members of the Smith Disser- headed opposition to the party state. As pere- tation Group - Bob Freeland, Mary Kelsey, Hyun stroika unfolded, large fractions of the Soviet Ok Park, Chris Rhomberg, Brian Rich, Suava Sal- leadership abandoned their allegiance to a so- ameh, Anders Schneideman, Rob Wrenn, and Mona cialist future, turning their backs on the past as an Younis. Their comments became the basis for rewrit- ing the paper. Burawoy's research was partially sup- embarrassing failure. Fourth. international polit- ported by grants from the MacArthur Foundation and ical and economic forces are conspiring to pro- the Social Science Research Council, administered mote the most rapid transition to capitalism pos- through IREX. All names which appear in the text are sible. Economic aid is made contingent on intro- pseudonyms. ducing a stable monetary system. liberalizing pric- 16 American Sociological Review, 1992. Vol. 57 (February:16-38) THE SOVIET TRANSITION FROM SOCIAL1SM TO CAPITALISM 17 es, privatizing state enterprises and bringing down capitalism. For example. economists Sachs and tariff barriers. Fifth. even if there is no strong Lipton (1990. p. 63) claim that the biggest obsta- internal bourgeoisie. still capitalism has a magi- cles to the effectiveness of "shock therapy" lie in cal appeal to all strata in Soviet society - the government responsiveness to popular demands possible delivery from an economy of shortages for protectionism or reflating the economy, and and all the deprivation and degradation that this in paralyzing debate over privatization. Similar- entails. Finally. the transition is not utopian - ly, political scientist Przeworski (1991, chap. 4) there ar-econcrete examples of "successful" cap- has suggested that the more radical the strategy italist societies. from Sweden to Germany. from of transition the more likely it is to succeed but the United States to Japan, from South Korea to that implementation may be incompatible with Taiwan. In short, if ever there were favorable liberal democracy. Again. the focus is on the circumstances for a transition from one econom- political conditions of transition. In a less sophis- ic system to another, they surely exist in the new ticated and more triumphal analysis. historian Commonwealth of Independent States. Malia (199 1) celebrated the collapse of theMos- At least in their rhetoric and their programs, cow putsch (August 1991) as sweeping away the this optimism is echoed by the teams of Soviet past: "For the starkest fact of the Russian Revo- "economic experts" who have been planning the lution of 199 1 is that virtually nothing remains of transition to capitalism. For example, the five- the old Leninist system. No basic Communist hundred-day Shatalin plan, largely designed by institutions have proved salvageable for a 'nor- Yavlinsky and his collaborators, left little to mal' society" (p. 28). The Revolution installed chance - it laid out a detailed week-by-week liberal democracy with the mission "to put an program to be implemented during each of four end to the previous regime's equivocations about phases. Such programs bear the marks of the old moving toward a market system and privatizing Soviet order, not only in their devotion to plan- the economy, and to plunge ahead. while the new ning but also in their reliance on transforming government has the country's confidence, with the existing order through ideological mobiliza- 'shock therapy' on the Polish model, which is in tion and political decree. For seventy years ide- fact their inspiration"@ 27). ology and politics were directed to the most rap- In our view, these commentaries which focus id construction of socialism, now they have be- on the political conditions of the transition to a come instruments for the most rapid transition market economy underestimate the capacity of from socialism to capitalism. New legislation has the Soviet economy to reproduce itself and resist followed new legislation: the law on individual transformation. Nor do social surveys designed labor activity (1986), the law on the state enter- to assess social support for and resistance to prise (1987), and the law on cooperatives (1988), economic reform give an accurate account of eco- culminating in the law on ownership (1989) that nomic reality. These surveys may be relevant in in principle legalized the capitalist enterprise (Po- the fluid political sphere, but they overlook the morski 1991). These laws permitted new forms way interests are embedded in the day to day of organization and ownership -from coopera- operation of the existing economy. Even if all tives to small enterprises, from leasing agree- actors proclaimed themselves enthusiastic devo- ments to companies of limited liability, from joint tees of capitalism, still, they are locked into a ventures to joint stock companies. preexisting system of economic relations that is While Soviet scholars and journalists as well "indispensable and independent of their will" as politicians riveted their attention first on the (Marx [I8591 1978, p. 4). legislative enactment of economic reform and In this paper, we argue (1) that the Soviet po- then on the formal dissolution of the party state, litical regime was not overthrown but that it dis- there has been little regard for the effects of these integrated: (2) that the decomposition of the par- changes on existing social relations either within ty neither eliminated all obstacles to reform nor or between enterprises. Actual economic rela- reduced the economy to complete chaos; and (3) tions continue to be confused with their juridical that even in the unlikely event that liberal de- expression (Lewin 1974, chap. 8; Bettleheim mocracy should establish itself. it would not have 1976) as if banning the party marked the remov- the capacity to transform a tenacious Soviet econ- al of the last obstacle to full blown economic omy. Our argument is simple. We have not been reform. witnessing a "revolution," but the (long antici- Western scholars subscribe to the same politi- pated!) withering away of the state. Left behind cized view of the transition from socialism to Is an economy that exhibits many of the tenden- AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW cies and pathologies of the Soviet order but in of socialized production was the exact opposite of exaggerated form. Specifically, the withering anarchy. It was the increasing organization of pro- away of the state has given workers greater con- duction, upon a social basis, in every individual trol of production, has intensified the monopoly productive establishment. (Engels [I8801 1978, p.
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