Lecture
Это окончание невероятной информации про производственные отношения постсоветской россии.
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power.
Let us emphasize: the subjective interest of this or that representative of the ruling politico-economic elite may well be different, but the system of production relations is precisely distinguished by the fact that it compels people to act according to objective "rules of the game" or else pushes them out of their class. It realizes the objective socio-class interests of the dominant forces, not their personal wishes. How exactly can such reproduction be carried out? By preserving and developing the methods of coordination and appropriation named in the preceding subsections. These methods (shadow state regulation, corporate-bureaucratic exploitation of all corporate resources by insiders, and so on) are compatible only with an extensive type of reproduction. The reason is almost self-evident: this system of economic-political power generates, first, high transaction costs connected, in particular, with the bureaucratization of management, expenditures on extra-economic coercion, the inefficiency of the management and control system, and so on. Moreover, these costs must grow as this system's power strengthens, and at an accelerating rate. This point is so obvious that it needs no commentary. Second, it initiates in the ruling "elite" an objective necessity (which manifests itself sometimes even against the subjective values of particular representatives of this stratum) to constantly increase spending on prestige (status) [over]consumption, which stems from the specific nature of the relations of maintaining (strengthening) one's position. This is an attribute of the corporate-bureaucratic nomenklatura, for all levels of which a system of power "identifiers" is characteristic. The latter is measured — let us stress — not only by the volume of capital but also by a complex system of parameters integrating (1) capital as such, (2) the degree of fusion with state power, and (3) the potential for extra-economic coercion (since criminal jargon has already penetrated even scholarly language, we may, by analogy with the earlier-introduced concept, not coined by us, of "business by understandings," call this parameter the "degree of toughness"). Accordingly, a certain style and volume of status consumption is one of the main external indicators of the degree of "toughness" (economic-political power) of a given private- (and/or state-) corporate clan. These relations unfold at all levels: from the need for a minor employee of a large corporation to buy an exorbitantly expensive car on credit, to the world's longest yachts belonging to Russian oligarchs, and the insane spending on the Sochi Olympics, intended to serve as a status testament to the "toughness" of the country's corporate-bureaucratic nomenklatura as a whole. Third, this named system of power generates a high level of social differentiation together with tendencies toward social parasitism and the growth of déclassé segments of the population.
The multidimensional and therefore extremely rigid alienation, described above, of practically all categories of workers from labor and its results generates a low level of worker interest in improving the effectiveness of their activity, to say nothing of innovation. The dominance of resource-based corporate business fused with the state nomenklatura reduces the activity of small and medium business not only in the sphere of innovation but generally in any significant medium- and long-term production projects. The bureaucratic character of the state and its alienation from civil society initiate predominantly inefficient but status-significant directions for the expenditure of budget funds at all levels. Under conditions of high and constantly growing (owing to the same causes lying at the level of the system's basic production relation: multidimensional alienation) social differentiation, the state, alienated from society, must ensure the relatively stable existence of the poorest strata of the population while preserving significant social reserves.
But the orientation of social policy toward paternalism, and the consequently passive-conformist behavior of the population, together with the bureaucratically inefficient system of spending budget funds on maintaining stability rather than on development, reinforces the extensiveness of reproduction. Here a twofold relationship is reproduced, based on the alienation of citizens from the state and of the state from citizens. The state trusts neither its citizens nor business and therefore is afraid to invest in development (of both people and production), keeping "in reserve" some analogue or other of a stabilization fund. In turn, citizens and business trust neither the state nor themselves and therefore will not agree to a radical increase in state spending on development. This manifests itself, in particular, in capital's unwillingness to support long-term nationwide programs; and in the unwillingness of nearly the majority of the population to invest state and personal resources in long-term development programs — with payoffs 10-20 years out — for fundamental science, space exploration, progress in education, healthcare, culture, and the social sphere, at the expense of cutting current expenditures (on the wages of budget-sector employees, pensions, and so on). Hence, fourth, the relatively low share of expenditure on accumulation typical of the Russian system, which, moreover, goes in both the private and state sectors predominantly not toward development goals but toward a short-term increase in the "toughness" of the corporate-bureaucratic nomenklatura and the enrichment of the strata that serve it. Examples of such expenditures, besides the ambitious but inefficient projects named above, could include the ongoing investments in the construction of oil and gas pipelines, the mass construction of assembly plants in Russia, the rapid growth of trade and other spheres of the transactional sector, and so on. Thus a tripartite (worker + business + state) lack of interest on the part of the main actors of the Russian economy in abandoning the extensive type of reproduction takes shape. The results of this type of reproduction are obvious. At the technical-production level — a not-very-fast extensive growth, interspersed with crises and stagnations, while the economy retains its predominantly resource orientation together with the expansion of sectors typical of peripheral capitalism.
The latter include resource-extracting industries and material-production branches dependent on foreign capital (assembly from imported components, etc.), plus trade and services, plus education and culture, oriented toward servicing such an economy and the needs of a peripheral (i.e., highly differentiated, but for the most part backward-poor) "consumer society," plus the preservation of a weak, paternalistically oriented social sphere. A possible exception might be only the military-industrial complex, on the reasons for whose strengthening more will be said below. At the socio-economic level — the persisting trend of deepening real social differentiation, as well as the continuing consolidation of the power of the corporate-bureaucratic nomenklatura, moving into a new phase. Illustrations of the first trend include the growth of low-paid employment (which increased almost fourfold over the years of reform, to 12.5% in 2010), inequality in the distribution of workers' incomes (the Gini coefficient reached 0.413 in 2010), the scale of poverty (those in need make up more than 17% of the population), social insecurity, and so on. The new phase of the strengthening of the nomenklatura's power is marked, first, by one of the highest levels of wealth concentration in the world. Thus, according to World Bank data, 2% of Russia's wealthiest population owns 67% of the country's national wealth.
Second, this economic-political force — considerably strengthened over the past 10-15 years — has come to be characterized by a tendency toward consolidation. This is reflected, in particular, in attempts to form a new geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy for the Russian state — a proto-imperial one, oriented toward external expansion and the defense of its own ambitions. It is increasingly becoming the mouthpiece for the interests of Russia's increasingly transnational energy-and-resource corporations, for whom it is becoming vitally important to have a nationwide political force defending their interests in global markets, where they are for now kept in secondary roles by economically more powerful and geopolitically better-protected competitors. A consequence of this has been the attempts, typical of recent years, to revive Russia's military-industrial complex. This course is advantageous for all the main strata of the nomenklatura and appears positive to the "popular masses." For the corporate elite it is advantageous, since it allows access to (and, to no small extent, the siphoning off of) large state resources. Here, admittedly, new contradictions also arise between the old (resource-based) and new (industrial) clans of corporate elites, but that is a separate question. For the upper strata of the state nomenklatura it reinforces the appearance of its "toughness" (and not only in its own eyes, but also in the eyes of the electorate and of foreign opponents).
For the paternalistically-minded part of Russia's population (which at present is nearly the majority), the growth of the military-industrial complex and proto-imperial ambitions create a distorted form for the realization of their nationwide interests — an ostensible subordination of big capital's activity to state-wide goals (which are involuntarily, but wrongly, identified with the interests of the people as a whole). This new tendency, however, is ambivalent. The realization of this attempt could result in both certain positive changes (a partial restoration of industry, engineering education, some branches of science) and negative processes (the entrenchment of poverty, low social protection, problems in humanities education and culture). And on the whole, development through the strengthening of the military-industrial complex is one of the most inefficient options for advancing toward an innovative type of reproduction: the main result of the progress of the military-industrial complex is the creation of means for destroying people, nature, and society, while civilian production and science, insofar as they progress at all, do so only as a side effect and therefore in an extremely one-sided way. That said, the likelihood of a strategically consistent implementation of the course toward military-industrial progress, and of the effective use of the funds allocated to it, remains low. The authors are deeply unsure that (1) consolidation of the nomenklatura around precisely this program will become a reality, and, more importantly, that (2) this stratum — by definition burdened with the weight of inter-capitalist contradictions and extremely bureaucratized — will be able to do anything other than "as always." Thus a process of extensive e/involution takes shape, one that steadily reproduces the resource orientation of the economy, the rejection of innovation, and all those technical-economic and socio-economic foundations on which the power of the corporate-bureaucratic nomenklatura rests. The vicious circle of the extensive reproduction of the deformations specific to post-Soviet Russia — of the productive forces and production relations of late semi-peripheral-type capitalism, and of the pre-bourgeois and other "inclusions" it generates — closes upon itself and generates grounds for a new round of escalation of power for actors interested, at best, in the extensive expansion of the model that has taken shape, and at worst, in its preservation.
The difference in the role of the nomenklatura in the economy of the USSR and in the economy of the Russian Federation: All of this is achingly reminiscent of what was characteristic of the worst side of the USSR economy during its period of stagnation (late 1970s-1980s), and of what we wrote about a quarter of a century ago, foretelling the threat of "negative convergence" in the event of capitalistically oriented reforms. Unfortunately, our forecast has been borne out. But between the dominance of the nomenklatura in the economy of the USSR and in that of the Russian Federation there is also a difference, and a fundamental one at that. First, back then this system fed parasitically on the shoots of a new, socialist economy with its inherent strong intentions toward the development of education, science, culture, social justice, and so on. Now it feeds parasitically on relations of the formal and real subordination of labor to capital that have long since become a thing of the historical past, together with forms of late peripheral-type capitalism. Second, back then our economy still possessed a potential in key parameters of development (above all, human qualities) comparable to that of the most developed countries in the world. Now we lag behind them by decades.
It is significant that in this respect the "elites" turn out to be in solidarity with most of the "lower classes," for whom the closure of social mobility channels, characteristic of such a socio-economic system, makes "the absence of change" the dominant interest. Thus, according to the results of an all-Russian sociological study, "Poverty and Inequality in Contemporary Russia: A Decade Later," conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2013, those in need, who number around 34%, do not strive to change the situation but want "stability" (as 71% of those surveyed said). At the same time, "a decline in socio-political activity characterizes not only the poor but also representatives of well-off segments of the population." In the system of reproduction relations, as in other spheres of Russia's production relations, there is also a somewhat different subspace where, albeit in limited fashion, mechanisms of "normal" capitalist motivation for intensive reproduction do operate — in particular, the use of various means of raising labor productivity (in particular, technical, managerial, and other innovations) in order to raise the rate of profit. These mechanisms, by which capital is stimulated to cut costs and improve quality through innovation, operate in the Russian economy mainly in two spheres.
Either where (1) production (even if it is assembly-type or similar) is carried out within enterprises dependent on transnational corporations, to which the specifics of Russian oligarchic-bureaucratic capitalism apply only weakly, or (2) at domestic enterprises (predominantly in the non-resource real sector), where capital, on the one hand, is relatively free from the power of the nomenklatura and insiders, but, on the other hand, has no access to the resource and budgetary funds that would allow it to obtain rental income. The lack of access to rent thus becomes a strong stimulus for raising labor productivity. To the extent that such production develops in Russia, our country gains grounds for hope of capitalist intensification — that is, for the use of mechanisms of (1) development (2) a century old. Both parameters matter here: both the fact that this is nonetheless development rather than extensive growth/stagnation, and the fact that, historically speaking, these forms of stimulating progress are long outdated. The latter manifests itself, in particular, in the fact that even Russian capitalist enterprises oriented toward technical innovation, in the overwhelming majority of cases, prefer to purchase such innovations abroad rather than invest in developing their own. Let us sum up the main points of our view of the specificity of the economic system of post-Soviet Russia. This specificity is determined by (1) the crisis of the Soviet economic system, which led, owing to (2) a model of its resolution in the 1990s (the so-called "shock therapy") that was inadequate to post-Soviet conditions and historically reversive, to (3) a mutation of late semi-peripheral-type capitalism that, as a result of these mutations, reproduces (4) many negative features of the Soviet economic system and (5) generates a reversive process of regeneration of pre-bourgeois relations. This mutation itself is nothing other than the result of the victory, in the struggle for economic-political power in Russia, of oligarchic groups that feed parasitically on the country's national wealth and are fused with a state apparatus alienated from society; the model of extensive, resource-dependence-based reproduction generated by this is adequate for preserving the power of these named actors. A natural consequence of the formation of such a system is the weakness of the institutional system: the diffusion of institutions (in particular, a low level of specification and protection of property rights, of contract enforcement, and so on); the presence of numerous "institutional traps" (including situations where reforming inefficient or socially reactionary institutions requires expenditures exceeding the possible positive effect of the reforms, or runs into insurmountable resistance from one or another of the economic-political "elites"); the dominance of informal "rules of the game," and so on.
What, then, might the scenarios for the future evo/involution of our economic system be? In this text we do not wish to devote much attention to proving that the scenario of overcoming the main built-in flaw of our economy — the power of the corporate-bureaucratic nomenklatura — via a transition to a so-called "free (or, as a possible variant, minimally regulated) market economy" based on "genuine" private property is illusory. Let us mention only two arguments. First: this theoretical model is nothing more than nostalgia for the romantic era of capitalism, which passed centuries ago. Capitalism is no longer young; it is extremely cynical and harsh toward those who end up on the periphery. Second: it was precisely the attempt to create a "free market economy" in Russia that brought oligarchs and bureaucracy to power there, and it could not have led to any other result, as we predicted back in the last years of the USSR's existence. Why, then, step on the same rake a second time? Of course, "nothing ventured, nothing gained," but not under the conditions of our country. Are there alternative forces within the Russian economic system that are objectively uninterested either in attempting to realize the utopia of the "free market" or in preserving the existing system? Are there socio-economic grounds for a transition to an intensive type of reproduction aimed, at minimum, at reindustrialization, and at maximum, at ensuring the priority development of the creatosphere? Yes, there are, although they are weak, because the foundations that shape these economic and political interests, lying within the Russian system of productive forces and production relations, are themselves poorly developed. Let us examine this problem in somewhat more detail. The basis for the minimum alternative — that is, a transition to an intensive type of development oriented toward restoring an industrial system (close to the Soviet type) that meets the standards of the 4th and 5th technological modes — could be provided by private capitalist enterprises (in the non-resource real sector for civilian purposes) and state enterprises (in the resource industries, energy, infrastructure, and the military-industrial complex), on condition that an economic system characteristic of semi-peripheral capitalism takes shape in Russia, whose ruling economic-political class consistently pursues a long-term strategy of catch-up development. Part of Russian capital (predominantly the non-resource real sector) and workers, as well as certain strata of the bureaucracy (predominantly the weakly corrupted part of the security services and the leaders of subsidized regions), have for several years now been partially implementing this trend. In Russia a system of capitalist enterprises in the real non-resource sector has emerged and is functioning, partly realizing the model of intensive capitalist reproduction. They are incorporated into a system of production relations in which productive capital can accumulate predominantly through intensive development (since they have no access to resource rent or the budget), and is therefore interested in the reproduction of a skilled hired workforce and in an active industrial policy on the part of the state aimed at removing local corporate regulation of the economy — since otherwise it cannot win in competition with resource-based and similar corporate structures. Certain strata of residents of single-industry towns and medium-sized industrial towns in Russia, and partly of villages, are tactically interested in supporting this line: the development of such capital would somewhat improve their economic situation, although no qualitative change in the position of working people would occur — only a somewhat more orderly system of exploitative relations. For workers in the social sphere and the creatosphere, this course could also bring some positive shifts, but only on condition of a radical de-bureaucratization of the state apparatus — that is, if the course toward modernization is carried out by a democratic state resting on a strong civil society. The latter is unlikely, since "patriotic" capital has little interest in it: any real degree of democracy would strengthen social-reformist and anti-capitalist forces and would force capital, at minimum, to share substantially with citizens both property rights (strong trade unions, worker participation in management, demands for transparency and social responsibility of business) and income (a steep progressive income tax, and so on). At the stage of struggle against the corporate-bureaucratic nomenklatura, capital in the real sector is ready to support these demands for the sake of consolidating the opposition, but in the event of success it will most likely abandon these intentions. The realization of this line in practice remains, first, unlikely (mainly owing to the traditional political caution of Russian productive capital on the one hand, and the weak interest of the majority of citizens in it on the other, since even if they gain anything, it will be only minor tactical gains). Second, this strategy as a whole is already outdated: Russia has already missed the moment for an industrial, state-regulated capitalism. Such a course was relatively progressive (and even then only on condition of a strong social component along the lines of the "Swedish model") in the middle of the twentieth century. At the start of the twenty-first century, as we have already said, it is scarcely realistic and, at best, would bring Russia into the fold of the "civilized" semi-peripheral capitalist countries.
Часть 1 Chapter 16. The System of Production Relations in Post-Soviet Russia: Mutations of Semi-Peripheral Late Capitalism
Часть 2 Self-check questions - Chapter 16. The System of Production Relations
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