Читать книгу The Resurrection of Titanic - Марк Бойков - Страница 3

The communism is neither Marx's fantasy, nor the dream of poor men and beggars. Being crushed by the need, they simply cannot imagine what it is. The communism is also not the sectarian project of communists, who believed in their emancipating mission. And it is not the dead end, as many think today, following the ideas of the 'liberal reformers' such as Gaidar, Chubais, etc. The communism is the matter of history and all its participants. It is the history itself. Having begun at the time of the primitive communism, it is still developing to transform into more advanced, civilized forms. Namely: the history itself is the progress of the communism.

Judge for oneself: the production grows and with every new epoch, the number of people, who are quite content with their lives, becomes greater and greater. In the primitive society, due to the co-production, we can already find the surplus of products and free time for fun, love, exploration, and learning about the world around.

Still, work is the main thing, and the surplus increases, resulting in random and then in deliberate exchange. Afterwards, however, we can observe the stratification of people on rich and poor as the result of the loss of control over the product. The surplus of products disappears in one place and accumulates in another one – not as the part of common wealth but as the personalized one.

As a matter of fact, the communism is the increasing product of production, permanently alienated by some members of the society to their best advantage. So, the communism is the movement from the public ownership to the communism for the chosen ones. The times of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism are only the steps of this constant movement with the further growth of common wealth, seeking at the same time the communism for everybody. In the certain sense, therefore, the communism is the invention of the rich. They live by the principle: everybody works according to his or her abilities and gets according to his or her needs. Regarding insufficient production, it means living at the expense of others. Why is this happening?

It is quite simple. Every person is born with one fundamental contradiction – between the abilities and the needs. The abilities represent the creative part of the person, the needs – the consumer one. While implementing the abilities, we give our energy and ourselves. On the contrary, while satisfying the needs, we receive energy and recover ourselves. In the primitive society, these processes were relatively balanced as in nature. But these processes always went, go and will be going through hidden or explicit, reasonable or severe struggle, in which one of them constantly or to a varying degree of success takes precedence over the other one, and more or less prevails in a person as a psychological and then as a social dominant of behaviour.

That is, being by nature a creator and a consumer at the same time, a person acts more specifically in one or another role. Initially, therefore, all the human community was divided and is divided into creators and consumers to a varying degree of activity. Marx did not manage to reach a materialistic understanding of a person, but by formulating the basic regulatory principle of the future communist society: 'everybody works according to his or her abilities and gets according to his or her needs' – he gave the key to such an understanding. Moreover, now we are aware that in general, given equality in the primitive society the consumers were to develop and to rise in the upper classes of society, becoming all sorts of oppressors and exploiters, while the creators gradually fell to the lower classes, turning into the oppressed ones.

While the worker is working, the consumer lays hands on everything and, eventually, becomes the master. Free time, reclaimed by the people from nature, becomes the property of individuals and, materializing in the form of wealth, leads one to domination, and another one to submission and enslavement. This is also true of family relations.

However, humankind will perish if this tendency continues in the future. Consumers represent a 'black hole' in human society. Despite the growth of productive power of humankind, this will never be enough. The world domination of consumers brings us closer to global disaster. Nature can no longer cope with their appetites. And this is not a forecast. This is already a diagnosis.

Meanwhile, the existing level of production would allow the communism to be introduced by decree worldwide /one only needs the world government for this/. Look, what enormous wealth is concentrated in certain states, in certain classes, in the hands of certain people. What a huge, well-paid army of military men, police officers, and intelligence men with expensive weapons defends them, in essence, uselessly wasting enormous resources. What the army of managerial bureaucracy, the servants of the authorities and the capital, the false guardians of truth in mass media, having safely ensconced on the shoulders of the workers, create more and more fetishes and fictions to justify and to cover their benefits. If one sums up this, one will understand that only through reorganization /at least the general disarmament, the balanced reorientation of production, the redistribution of investment flows and products/ it would be possible to shift everywhere in the world to physiological ensuring of people's needs and to 2–3-hour working day only two or three times per week.

It is not about 'taking everything away and dividing'. Humankind needs much less of what is already produced to live in contentment. Therefore, the communism is not only possible – it is provided! Perhaps, it did not work well for everybody because it was appropriated by the chosen ones again. If before it had been taken away from the masses by the ruling, exploiting classes, in our time this was done by the political and bureaucratic elite, by the nomenclature that used its position for personal purposes. Like the previous rulers, the elite also did not need the communism for everybody as its consumer ambitions meant much more than the public needs. Though, all the privileges, which the elite had, could not be compared to the robbery of the people, which was committed under the pretext of the so-called liberal reforms.

Those, who were responsible for the safety of the public property, appeared to be among the plunderers. They had knowledge, service communications, personal contacts, access to information, official seals, and, most importantly, the time to implement their ideas. At the same time, the workers were supposed to work the shift and to find time for recovery before the next day to repeat everything again. Therefore, Chubais's assurances about equal starting opportunities during the privatization were the hypocritical lie of not only the bad-qualified economist but of the street gambler. While 'reforming' the nomenclature showed its true face hidden behind the endless verbiage, proving that it did not represent the higher moral classes of society.

In a certain sense, everybody was to blame. It is one thing when the ordinary worker produces low-quality products and gets paid in full, thereby steals welfare from society, uselessly burning primary products, materials, and energy, and it is quite another thing when the boss is engaged in such a 'burning'. The worker is often forced to do this, being under the pressure of conditions, orders, and the control system. Here is the example of the former 'order'. It will help to understand who is responsible for our failure.

There are the rate and the work quota. Let's say, the worker, who provides the work quota, is paid 100 rubles per month. The worker is not satisfied with the earnings and tries to over fulfil the task. When this happens more frequently and then becomes the mass /as everybody wants to live better/ phenomenon, the administration of factories, relying on the directives and the growing work plans, raises work quotas and, accordingly, reduces the rates for manufactured products. The worker returns to the same 100 rubles.

However, the worker's needs have rather increased than decreased. The person grows up, matures, gets married. Children are born and also grow up in that marriage. And over time, under the pressure of these circumstances, the worker has to get used to new work quotas and begins to over fulfil them. The administration of the factory also insists on the changes and revises work quotas and rates.

In some places, it happened more often, in others – less often. Sometimes this appeared to be reasonable, at times – severe. But this practice, which became widespread, was the detonator for the Novocherkassk massacre in 1962 when the demonstration of workers was shot. The overall tension was bound to explode at the particular place, which had focused negative actions. That's how the element of protests and the force of arms burst into the economy.

It seemed that it was time for economists to think. But no, scientists, who serve the policy, say almost in unison: 'Wages should not grow faster than the productivity of work'. In fact, they just confuse productivity of work with mechanical production and tend to get better results due to the increasing tension of work by imposing wage cuts.

Reducing wages, they encourage the person to the intensification of work, and not to increase of productivity. Even Lenin wrote: 'We witnessed how in the 1980s our manufacturers outrageously oppressed workers, how they transformed penalties into means of lowering workers' wages, not confining themselves to lowering only rates. The oppression of the capitalists over the workers reached its peak'(1). Like this: ideological heirs of Lenin, who were considered to be scientists, chose the way of manufacturers of the late XIX century. As a result, actual impairment of work began, often causing stress and nervous breakdowns among the workers.

However, this also affected the quality of products. Time, like water, is physically incompressible. If the work quota increases by the same time unit without any technical improvement, relying only on the motional acceleration, then, regardless the growth of the skill at the given intensification of work, sooner or later there will be the limit to human capabilities, and the worker will be forced to either sacrifice personal interests or seek another solution. And on a subconscious level, the more the worker is 'speeded up', the more careful he/she has to be. The worker skips something in the work, leaves something unfinished in the product. As a result, while the number of products increases, its quality decreases.

But this is not a loss. In society, as in nature, nothing comes from nowhere and nothing does not disappear anywhere without a trace. It is a forced, hidden form of consumption of the product before its production. If the worker lost something in income, then he/she, naturally, left something unfinished at work. To increase the work quota the worker 'paid in' work saving. The worker provided more products, but of lower quality.

And still the worker suffered more. Walking out the door of the checkpoint, the worker turned into the buyer of that same, partially consumed product, which he/she certainly did not like. Lower quality led to the corresponding increase in the deficit. And extra earning, which the worker was receiving for the exceeding of the work quota, he/she was forced to give then, as an overpayment, to the speculator, to the state that was increasing the price of the quality product. Or it could be useful and helpful in acquiring the desired goods to people.

The life of people did not improve directly – from work. At the state warehouses, a great number of useless goods was accumulating. Depreciating, these goods were becoming enormous losses of social work, which, in turn, were doubling, trebling because people, who had manufactured this product, were also getting wages, bonuses, and funds. The country was reposing on the descending number of truly valuable workers. But the more people worked, the poorer they became since the lion's share of work simply circled down the drain. Reports about the overfulfilment of plans were coming from everywhere, and still there were empty store shelves. But if only…

There was a huge turnover of staff, and people, repeatedly switching jobs, worked not where they were attracted by the abilities but where they were pushed by the needs. And the country, which was building the communism, ceased to enjoy the work.

The person was under the pressure of consumer compression. Being convinced of the impossibility to earn the desired wealth by honest, straight work, the person sought to all kinds of under-the-counter, shadow, devious ways. The person did not shun false reporting, fraud, and even theft. He/she began hazing with the master, the foreperson, the controller, and other useful people, preferring career progress instead of improving performance the work: grades, positions, ranks. The spirit of utilitarianism, mercenariness, and venality penetrated the person's relations. Everything fair and good in this atmosphere was under the stress of alienation, the pressure of hostility, the aversion, and the rejection. Socialist ideals were hollowing out. Revolution, winning seemingly in the name of workers, began to deviate from its objectives and to suppress its roots.

In the meantime, the future petrels of liberalism, such as Burbulis and Gaidar, Shatalin and Yavlinsky, Livshits and Chubais, Yasin and Gavriil Popov, were making their careers. /They are making their careers all their lives. From the first class at school! Fear of such well-wishers!/. They consider the economy in isolation from the person and out of alignment with him/her as a closed, self-sufficing system, as a thing in itself. They defend master's and doctoral dissertations /certainly, on the basis of 'Marxism'/ with the innocent purpose to sanctify the economic robbery of the party, state, and academic elite, mixed in the ecstasy of the privileged consumption. The practice of raising work quotas and impairment of work is driving the economy to a standstill but is not questioned.

However, the person is being driven in an even deeper impasse. When work quotas were increasing, and rates were decreasing; thus, the obligations were naturally rising, becoming fantastic. The work force underwent the accelerated wear and tear. Everyday tiredness, accumulating, adopted the chronic value. This value, in turn, accelerated and exacerbated the daily value, imposing on top of one another not in 4–5, but in an hour or two. Only illness and alcohol could help to escape from this vicious circle.

Alcohol, however, is easily converted into illness. First, extra earning is spent on alcohol. Then, when this becomes a habit, wages are also spent on it. When drinking turns into drunkenness, even wages are not enough. Inhibition of substantiality of the person turns into his/her destruction. It is wrong when they say that drinking is an expression of social protest.

In fact, when work quotas are increasing from time to time, the production takes so much energy that by the end of the shift the person is completely exhausted. An interesting meeting, housework, time for sports or children, reading a book or going to the theatre – all this requires energy and desire. But there is none. They are suppressed, muted, and crushed. The more worthlessly the production is organized, the more physical and mental energy it takes from the person. And, therefore, it also rules over the person outside the factory.

Once the person leaves work completely exhausted and does not want anything, except doing nothing or a bad way of spending time, this suggests that his/her essence is depleted. And alcohol seems to be the simplest way to 'rise from the ashes'. And to feel oneself a person again, he/she… paradoxically kills this in himself/herself.

Alas, 'drinking does not kill humanity in a human being'. It only completes what badly organized production does to the person. That production, which forces the person to make the product worse than he/she can, compels to act contrary to conscience and abilities, encourages the unusual behaviour. Thus, the reduction of product quality secretly expresses the destruction of human nature.

Therefore, in direct proportion to the raising work quotas, drinking is spreading around the country. And when under Gorbachev a struggle with drinking began/certainly without understanding its reasons, and using command and volitional methods/, it only added fuel to the flame, caused anger of the masses, and made one question the mental abilities of the leaders. The system is doomed and slowly dies if the foundations of humanity begin to crumble. It has always been this way in critical periods of history.

To change something for the better, one should first understand the reason why it has become bad.

It all started in the difficult, post-war period, under Stalin. As the war-torn economy was recovering, work quotas and rates were changing in an effort to fill the market with goods as soon as possible. However, in Stalin's time, this practice was accompanied by annual price reductions on goods of mass-market, i.e. the increased work quota was returned to the worker in the form of increased consumption of the product that naturally balanced its relationship with the state. With the death of Joseph Vissarionovich price reduction was terminated, while revisions of work quotas and prices not only continued but increased. Moreover, under Khrushchev, prices began to rise. The worker was in the clutches.

From time to time, however, there were injections in wages of one or another category of workers and employees. But in practice, it meant that governmental bureaucracy was giving things to one category that were taken away from others. Not allowing people to earn on their own, bureaucracy gave them a handout, usually called the 'enormous social achievement'. In practice, destroying the actual interest in work, they tried to solve this by encouraging of political enthusiasm. But one injustice caused another: in general, pay raise equalized the good worker and the bad worker, and the redistribution of funds caused the transit of achievements from more successful industry to low-performing one, spreading mismanagement across the country. It is clear, therefore, that these increases did not solve anything and only exacerbated the overall situation. The degradation of the economy continued.

The situation went out of control, but the ruling elite, not understanding the reality, fed on illusions provided by political and economic science. And the whole political economy of the USSR was simply broken due to lack of knowledge about the actual source of growth of productivity of work. The country was already 'building the communism', and was still relying on the 'working class' /work support of capitalism/ with the intensification of physical work, using the vilest methods of this intensification.

And we are not talking here about peasants. One can add to this 'class struggle' with the whole world, called 'cold war'. The increasing production of missiles, tanks, submarines, aircraft, A- and V-bombs – everything was in dimensionless quantities. If we had built the communism, we would have surprised the world and would have won capitalism economically, without a fight, without enormous expenditures for armament.

And what about aid to underdeveloped countries, unequal exchange within the socialist camp. And what about the projects of the century: development of virgin and fallow lands, building secret cities and centres, the BAM, wetland drainage and swamping of deserts, construction of dams and turns in the river bed… And so on and so forth. All at the expense of workers – cuts in their standard of living. And where is the true historical aim here? Where is the understanding of the meaning of life?

Politics dictated the economy its conditions, instead of, on science, being defined by it. Its relationship with economy has been turned upside down. And instead of receiving the grounds of its goals, politics hindered the development of economy with inflated phantoms of the political elite. In science, the Central Committee, the Politburo. No one dared to argue with it, to propose ideas, to guide the path of truth. It was beyond criticism and above suspicion. Certainly, this could not continue indefinitely.

Many people think that the collapse of socialism /the COLLAPSE, not a defeat/occurred as a result of 'perestroika'. Alas, this is only a visible consequence. The events are not always coming one after the other, connected by a direct causal-investigatory dependence. We could sink even without 'perestroika'. What is the difference? The crisis happened not in 'stagnant' time /it began to manifest itself at that period/, but much earlier.

It isn't even a conspiracy of the 'imperialist forces'. These forces and the conspiracy are almost always present. But the events are determined primarily by internal causes, without which a foreign conspiracy simply would not come true. In other words, if our elite had those, who were thinking first about the people, the leaders, occupying key positions, and foreign geeks, like Allen Dulles and Zbigniew Brzezinski, would be left holding the bag.

Certainly, it is not about some 'Jewish conspiracy', allegedly encompassing and penetrating the whole world. Ultra-patriots only muddy the waters, replacing a scientific interpretation of problems with ethnic prejudices and zoological instincts. Militant nationalism is favourable to such 'conspiracy' and is often heated by it because these instincts easily hide the true reasons.

The shifting consciousness of the masses from social problems to the area of kinships is the cultivation of blind hatred and stupid narrow-mindedness. Victories at this ideological front usually end in cannibalism. What can be more miserable than an army sent to the wrong place? It is doomed to fail even before the fight.

Discord, in short, was long overdue. Not all was well in our kingdom. But where, when, how and why this infraction happened, remained unclear.

When Gorbachev came to power, the need for change was felt by many. Therefore, his slogans of 'perestroika for the purpose of democratization' and 'democratization to release the creative potential' of the country seeds were well accepted. But it turned out to be nothing more than 'dragon's teeth' because the sower did not know, why in fact there was no democracy and for whom it should exist. And what one needed to do to have it. He simply did not know /did not have programs/ for reforming the existing system of leadership, and he did not find anything better than to sew it, certainly, with white thread to 'western values': publicity, pluralism, multiparty system, the presidency, – existing more for the gratification of the masses, and not for improving their lives. He went not towards the development of the personal system, not from its roots, and through borrowing in addition to the existing. Naturally, it was a freak with two heads on the splitting neck. And there was endless chatter instead of work.

Having talked to complete incontinence, Gorbachev missed the precious time in such historical situations. Party nomenclature, which had remained silent, gradually looked around, raised its head and formed the SCSE / the State Committee on the State of Emergency/. The masses, awakened by Gorbachev's demagogy, resisted this and in the August rush of 1991 destroyed the bankrupt imperious superstructure. This was prudently used by an ambitious rival and competitor of M. Gorbachev, B. Yeltsin, who, in fact, then stole the victory from the people.

Many people, especially obstinate communists, accepted the incident as a counterrevolutionary coup. But it was not so!

Where could these anti-socialist forces come from if there was a united public property? That's nonsense! That's silly! There was no counter-revolution, as many people think, but a real National democratic revolution, which communists, supposedly immutable spokesmen of people's interests, did not let happen at their time. And this event, admittedly, was progressive, and not regressive! It considered the question not about the way of life in society, as the socialist revolution in 1917, but about the method of controlling. Dictatorship or democracy – that was its major concern.

People, it must be said, suffered not from socialism /it did not exist in its true form at that time/, but from false, unscientific and antihuman, bureaucratic, forceful leaders. It was supposed to happen: the superstructure, which did not correspond the basis, as taught by Marxism, was destroyed. Things, which could not be imagined by the scientists, the masses have done in three days.

This revolution involved a tremendous amount of true, thinking communists. If in some sense they were against socialism, but it was not for the purpose of movement back into the past, into capitalism, and with the aim of moving forward into the future, for its improvement, against existing, vile, vulgar and bureaucratic, military socialism with the dictatorship of the party, of the party and state nomenclature.

However, instead of bringing the superstructure in accordance with the basis, the liberals, who had come to power, did not think to democratize anything. They created democracy only for themselves. And they began to appropriate the key positions, banks, and mass media. They began to destroy the basis, bringing it in compliance with its usurped power: to steal public property and to keep it in personal apartments, chests, and safes. Under the guise of denationalization, corporatization, privatization, they were covering the usual greed with beautiful words and colorful slogans. But they did not prove but imposed their doctrine. They did not refute Marxism but rejected it. It was their new government that 'took everything and divided'. Certainly, they divided everything among themselves. They were raking heat with people's, work-worn hands.

It is well known that revolutions are planned by geniuses and are made by heroes, but their results are enjoyed by villains. And the people soon saw who had come to power. It was the same cohort, but only from the second echelon. These were the same nomenclature and its associates, who had turned themselves into 'well-doers', but with even greater appetites.

And the people rebelled again. It happened in September-October 1993. There were many people, who had participated in the revolution of 1991, but who had realized everything. But it was striking that if the former militant 'communist dictatorship' had left the battlefield almost peacefully in 1991, having regretted the people and having taken the troops, the new, supposedly democratic, government ruthlessly shot its opponents. Certainly, it was done from the best, liberal and democratic motives. It turns out that those, who throw people under the tanks, can easily throw tanks at people… You were wrong, Boris! It would be better if you remained a conductor of the musicians, who were greeting you.

Well, if you were a great economist, like Gaidar or Yavlinsky, why didn't you figure out the reasons of the deteriorating position of the people? Why did you simply reject science, which was studied even by capitalists, and begin to act: first – the transfer of someone else's liberal experience in the form of reforms; second – the invention of a new, market paradise in 500 days?

Artificial borrowing, simply rejecting personal development /if one calls a spade a spade/, does not make any sense. However, it is the same regarding the failed propagation of fictional schemes.

But the market, so desired by our opponents, which unites now all kittens and cheeky wolfhounds, one can neither introduce nor abolish. While there are division of work, exchange of products, and attendant commodity-money relations, the market is objective. Another thing is its level of development and state regulation, but it cannot be, by design, neither created nor destroyed. But one, ultracommunists, felt that it was allegedly gone, and others, ultra-liberals, decided to recreate it. This is ridiculous!

Above we have seen that the problems, created in the consumer market in our country /poor quality of goods, deficit, distortions in pricing, hierarchy, and gradation of distribution nets, and more, right up to infringement of morals/, hark back to incorrect regulation of job market. And the conflict, which had constantly been conducted between the worker and the administration for the price of work, expressed in the lowering of prices on one side and exceeding standards on the other, was a tough proof of its existence. The commodity market was simply suffering from bad regulation of job market.

But there came «great and terrible» Yegor Timurovich! And solemnly, with a red ribbon and scissors for cutting, he opened it for us and supposedly brought us into it. While he was to examine the existing socialist market and to learn how to regulate it. But without fooling around: as if the market will fix itself, but in the interests of the worker. To warn and prevent the alienation, appropriation and accumulation of the work of others by hidden grabbers. But Yegor did not do what was needed. He wanted fame.

And what do Marxism and communism have to do with this, when people have not left the brutish state yet, when «self comes first» and people, for the sake of primary consuming, are ready to be violent, when everybody wants personal and not common happiness? If you were a scientist like Gaidar, why didn't you see that infringement of needs, endlessly done by bureaucracy, led to activation, aggravation of contradictions, but not to the growth of productivity of work?

Marxism, certainly, got burned by «the person». But isn't that exactly what we see in the avalanche-like tsunami of liberal «reforms»? Gaidar's crafts gave freedom, alas, not to the people, but to the scums and scoundrels to plunder the working people. This untied their hands, freed from prohibitions, responsibility, and morals. They have corrupted a greedy grabber and a self-satisfied parasite with impunity.

Do you think that people are born humans once and for all? Nothing of the sort. People left primitive conditions not that long ago. Features, attributes, and means changed. Essence, goals, and passion are still the same. The species gives only a form but does not guarantee humanity in the person. People need to become people every day and every moment, proving it to themselves and others through overcoming the animal, consumer egocentrism, through the delight of the developed human abilities. A person is as a person as much his/her creative abilities are developed and active. This is what makes him/her different from other living creatures in the world and compatriots in society.

Did you want to get better? And what happened? The vilest passions were unleashed. Do not jump in at the deep end. Having replaced science with subjectivism and eclecticism, you ruined the continuity of social development, having depreciated life and the efforts of several generations, of a few million people. And how many people have you ruined together with Chubais – from malnutrition, illnesses, suicides, hungry freezing to the floor? How many people you did not let to be born, to grow, to be realized? You have won a historical dispute with mass repressions of 1937–1938: we have never lost so many people in time of peace. But you continue to smile playfully and to lecture, pretending to be inscrutable wise people. And you succeed just because your savvy reforms have turned to be beneficial for bureaucracy, which you criticize, as the right of unrestricted private property is dearer to it than former dosed privileges. And it is not because that liberalism is a highway of human progress. Your deception was favourable to «the elite». That's the whole sacramental secret of your success!

Let's get back to our «deep end», if you like. If the people destroyed the superstructure, which did not fit in, then why did this happen? Privileges? But the rulers always had them, and the people always tolerated this. Command and mandative administration? What else, if there is no interest?… Bureaucratism in the consideration of requests, complaints, suggestions? But everything is given not for beautiful eyes but according to regulations… Defects of the distribution system? They are everywhere, aren't they?… Alas, all these nasty things are well known and familiar to the people to make them jump under tanks or tank attack. The liberal intelligentsia, who consider themselves to be spiritual mentors, got exhausted of criticizing nomenclative and bureaucratic socialism. But, certainly, it was after the fight. And they left everything as it was, only having worsened and multiplied it, and having destined themselves as the new elite.

People got up and went to fight because they wanted to live better. They always want this. And they work for it. But all is in vain. People are working more and more, suffering, and hoping. And again they do not succeed. They change tactics and begin to sneak around, but they see that their achievements are not worth it and do not justify sacrifices. When this is accumulated over the edge and moves into high gear, they go outside, to the rails, to the «White House». And they resent!

But what scoundrels, who think only about themselves, does one need to be in power to stand against angry batons, soldiers, barbed wire, riot police, and tanks? And there are communists, who call this impulse the «counterrevolution». And the people just want to live and to live better, being neither the communists nor the democrats, not having any concept of the basis, of the superstructure. The leaders must have been thinking about the people and not about themselves. But they were not thinking about the people, and therefore, they left them aside. This is the essence of the problem.

But why and when did the communist leaders stop thinking about people? They used to think about them. That is why they were supported and raised to power in their time.

To understand something, we must call a spade a spade. The socialist revolution is neither an invention of Lenin nor the result of the communist propaganda. It is the result of the natural development of society. This is a joint movement for justice and law of the communist leaders and the working masses. But then the leaders became the ruling class.

When they were fighting together with the workers for their future, they were equal. And it was perfect! But, when they came to power, they began to build a ladder of the state, party and administrative positions, ranks and titles. And it turned out that the recent heroes… were the ordinary people, like everyone else. Each of them had their own problems and motives inside, fundamental contradiction between the abilities and the needs that press down on the person on the outside and on the inside, causing one or other shift in his/her thoughts, deeds, actions. In short, they became competitors among themselves.

Fighting first for the nation, they became fighters for themselves. For the purpose of nomination, growth, and personal success. All the hallmarks of a career struggle were present, where even the overall success was usually placed on the altar of somebody's personal success. As the class struggle in this period was still in progress, interpersonal career civil strife could be easily confused with class contradictions.

We know from history that many intraparty fights took place in this period from top to bottom. Factions, coalitions, platforms, deviations. The main leader, General Secretary of the party – and it was Stalin – was to understand properly the crucible of this struggle, bellows, blowing from the personal plans and calculations, to try to temper the excessive heat of the battles. But Stalin himself was an ardent fighter, often exceeding the integrity for the sake of intransigence.

Certainly, he could not completely stop this struggle: it still would have continued. But, as the supreme leader, he had to keep it under control to avoid natural expansion and toughening, transfer to the «class», controlled by somebody else, course. Fighting the enemies and the struggle between the comrades in the party /for the best performance, for personal success/ are two different things. But in this fight, when leaders became rivals, they began to think more about themselves than about the people. And this was natural. They did it not out of malice, not out of blood lust. They did it not to fall, not to be supine, to have more influence and greater protection from a higher level.

The person just cannot be his/her own enemy. And he/she cannot wait when the main leaders of the country comprehend the problems of the new society. And he/she works with everybody to find solutions to common tasks. So, this happened not because the communists were bad, but because they did not know about the crossing and the pitfalls on their way. However, the present liberals, who want to turn history backward, also do not know this.

And this is not a tragedy yet. When did the leaders /especially the appointed ones/ think more about people than about themselves? So: only a few of them, and sometimes. And only exceptions suffered for people. For example, Christ. Therefore, the masses were worshiping him. Those, who are from the lower class, and not from the upper class, usually think more about people. But when human needs are growing, and «benefactors» are going crazy of consumer ambitions, then the people are coming out to the barricades. Call-signs to the barricades of 1991 were set, strangely enough, in 1936 with the adoption of the Constitution of the Soviet Union, which was proposed by Stalin at the Extraordinary VIII Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union, reporting on the victory of socialism.

The thing is, and it is necessary to pay special attention to it, that according to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, socialism is created from the transitional period by the classless society. In confirmation, not referring to new sources, for continuity of reading, I shall again cite at least a few sound quotes to avert reproaches or suspicion of a defect of the problem. This has been discussed for decades, but there is no response. Nobody supports or refutes, i.e. everybody remain silent. It is a matter of principle. As if one can get away from the truth, having put up with the conscience!

K. Marx in his letter to J. Weydemeyer wrote: «…the dictatorship itself makes the only transition to the destruction of classes and society without classes» (2). It has been discussed already but it still gives food for thought! That is, after the dictatorship of the proletariat, the society becomes classless.

F. Engels: «The proletariat takes the state power and turns the means of production first into the state property. Thereby the proletariat destroys itself as a proletariat, and it destroys all class distinctions and class contrasts, as well as the state as a state» (3). In short, it is alleged that the seizure of power and the socialization of the means of production – the process of complete, including in «itself», destruction of classes.

And here is what the Marxist Ulyanov (Lenin) wrote on this account:

«Everyone knows that Marxism is a theoretical justification of the destruction of classes» (4). Like this: no more, no less. The final definition!

«The dominance of van guard of all the workers and the exploited ones, i.e. the proletariat, is necessary at this transitional period for the complete destruction of classes…» (5). Note: for complete, not for partial. How can any class be left after the «complete» destruction?

«Society, which still has the class difference between a worker and a peasant, is neither communist nor socialist» (6). What more can one say here? Lenin was very accurate and eloquent.

«We have the class struggle, and our goal is to destroy classes. As long as we have workers and peasants, socialism will remain unfulfilled» (7).

«…Socialism will be possible only when there will be no classes when all the means of production are in the hands of the workers» (8). This is, in fact, the criterion of the classless society! Socialism accepts a society with no classes.

«There will be the dictatorship of the proletariat. Then there will be the classless society» (9).

In one of his speeches before the workers Lenin expressed himself even more categorically: «When passing your room, I saw the poster with the inscription: «The kingdom of workers and peasants will last forever». And… when I read this strange poster, I thought: there are our misinterpretations and misunderstandings here with on some elementary and fundamental things. In fact, if the kingdom of workers and peasants lasted forever, it would mean that there would never be socialism. As socialism means the destruction of classes, and as long as workers and peasants remain, different classes will be too, and, therefore, there may not be complete socialism» (10).

And it was written in the Program of the Party in 1919. (V. I. Lenin. Complete Works, vol. 38, p. 86, 105, 419). Stalin himself supported it. In his article «Problems of Leninism» in 1926 he called the dictatorship of the proletariat «the power… for the destruction of classes, for the transition to the classless society, to the socialist society» (11). He mentioned this in «Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on January 26, 1934»: «Let's take, for example, the problem of building a classless socialist society. The Seventeenth Party Congress said that we were going to create a classless, socialist society» (12).

Everything seemed to be going well, according to the program and in agreement with the historical logic. In fact, if one destroys the slaveholder as a class, can one keep a slave? Certainly, no. Whose slave is he/she going to become, if there is no a slaveholder?… If the serfdom is abolished, can one save the landlord and peasantry as classes? No! The peasants will remain, but will no longer be the class of the feudal society. They will form the layer, disintegrating on farm workers and kulaks. In their own way, they will segregate, become declassed, and the landlords will find another place in the changing society. Well, if the capitalists are eliminated, can one save the wage work as a class? No! Workers will remain not as a class but one of the layers of the work force. The recruitment, as the clerical act, cannot be confused with wage work in the sense of social status.

If the exploiting classes are eliminated, the exploited ones will be automatically eliminated too. The destruction of classes is not the destruction of people, as it may seem. This is a change in ownership relations. It was discussed and described by the Marxist science. The classes appear and disappear together from the historical scene. They are formed from layers, consist of layers, and turn into layers at the end of their existence. That is the dialectic! It was captured by the Marxist science in its programs. Humankind has infinitely suffered from class divisions, class oppression, and class battles in its history, and has envisioned the coming revolution as the freedom from classes, with subsequent harmonization of human relations.

And suddenly, after the Seventh Party Congress, Stalin announced the winning socialism to be the «class society»: with the «brand new working class», the «new Soviet peasantry», and the layer of «new work intelligentsia». What is it? How? What for? Why?…

Everything becomes clear through the analysis of further events in the country: Stalin needed classes to retain the dictatorship of the proletariat and, consequently its position at the top. If he admitted, as was required by Marxism and the Leninist party program, socialism as a classless society, then the dictatorship of the proletariat /or at least its part: NKVD, the political surveillance, the investigation, the correctional camps/ were supposed to be dismantled, and the state of the transitional period – to be rebuilt in accordance with the requirements of the new society. As the classless society cannot be controlled like the class one. New phase – new ways of organizing society and its life.

With the victory of socialism, according to the canons of the Marxist science, the state will have to die off /not the classes, but the state, on the basis of the absence of classes/, giving way to the general democratization and development of self-government.

There are no classes – there is nobody to be suppressed, and there is no need to do this. There is a possibility to form a state structure without «oprichnina», without special services working against the citizens. Lenin wrote about this in «The State and Revolution». From this moment, the role of personality in history begins to increase. And it is not only the personality, authorized by the position, but any personality with intelligence, zeal, and talents. But then Stalin gets a legitimate rivalry. And this is not a part of his plans: there is enough competition. And he «corrects» Marxism to hide his personal goal.

If he did not do this, there would be complete nonsense: the dictatorship of the class in the absence of classes. With the help of the falsification of Marxism, very convincing /after all, the masses have accustomed to consider themselves classes/, with wild applause, he is implementing the second, after turning the position of General Secretary into the supreme post, secretive coup d'etat. That is, he usurps power and can represent any opponent as the class enemy.

However, one cannot play hide-and-seek with the history, and the wrong decision turns out to thousands of present and future problems, inconsistencies, fractures, and extremes.

Since the society was announced the «class» one, and it preserved the dictatorship of the proletariat and the corresponding ideology («of the irreconcilable class struggle»), as well as the bodies of violence and repression, then all the conflicts: interpersonal, group, and even ethnic /people constantly collide with each other on different occasions and grounds/, – were naturally regarded as the class ones, with all the ensuing consequences.

Naturally, career internecine struggle, not only among the party apparatus, flared up with renewed vigour and perseverance, using the rhetoric and tools of the state power. In addition, once you preserve the bodies of violence /and they cannot dismiss themselves/, you pay them for their work and reward for success, they continue to search for enemies and to find them regardless whether they exist or not, or simply fabricate the cases to justify their own work.

So, quite paradoxically, with the victory of socialism /instead of humanizing human relations/, the mass repressions take place. It was not Stalin, who did this in relation to the people. And it was not among the lowest classes /workers, peasants, minor officials/ but among those, who were fighting for the nomination or self-protection of the candidates for roles, positions, and achievements. Interpersonal competition turns into a fierce struggle, with the use of NKVD. Stalin did not sanction, but rather provoked this. The people themselves fought among themselves, confusing /sometimes deliberately/ interpersonal conflicts, presenting them as «class», attracting the attention of the authorities, sincerely believing that they are doing the right thing.

It is not even the mass character of victims, on which the traditional criticism of Stalinism has been fixated, but the mass character of participants of persecution, deceived and sincere executors of repressions, that is striking. It was not «the evil will» of the leader, not the innate blood lust of the Bolsheviks, but the distortion of Marxism that led them to tragedy. It was both cruel and senseless. This was the pay for the deliberate forgery of Marxism.

Repressions, therefore, emerged as a flash, like a continuation of the «class struggle» in a classless society. But it was an interpersonal, ordinary, competitive, ongoing struggle, however, with the use of methods and techniques of class struggle as a result of the Stalin's perversion of Marxism.

This perversion eventually led to the perversion of socialism, the break-down of all its foundations. To Stalin's credit, it should be recognized that in the practice of the following guidance, when he was alive, he corrected much of what had been set in the theory. In Marxism, it is impossible to distort one part without ruining all the integrity and consistency of the worldview concept. The dialectics of world development, as a guiding thread in this doctrine, cannot be canceled even by Stalin.

Having preserved the dictatorship of the proletariat, which historically had fulfilled its mission and therefore had become needless, Stalin initially brought the superstructure in contradiction to the construction of the socialist basis, having pinned down its further development. In a certain sense, he gave it a forced acceleration.

Socialism was growing, as a rigid construction, but not as a living organism. Command and mandative manner of management from top to bottom, almost without feedback, without liberties, but with the regulated freedom of discussion and creative work only by permission, for the trusted ones, cost us tremendous strength in the work, enormous efforts sometimes spent foolishly and in vain.

Stalin centralized the opportunity to think about society and the people on himself, having given others the right to rivalry against each other /he just forgot that he was not going to live forever/. Therefore, next rulers of the country failed to neither receive nor give others autonomy and curiosity in government. They thought only of devotion of the people, so they could use them to approach their communist paradise. Someday it had to echo.

When Nikita Khrushchev came to power, his personality left a noticeable impact on the government of the country. But no more than that. Nothing in its basis was not questioned or theoretically comprehended. All of his innovations came from his feelings, but not from the mind, and, therefore, did not make fundamental changes.

Having branded the public worshiping with shame, the cult of personality of Stalin, having condemned the repressions as «unsubstantiated» /and that's all, i.e. without the explanation of their causes/, did not affect the Stalin's falsification of Marxism, done for the sake of consolidation of personal power. And virtually he left everything intact. Even the so-called «national state», included in the Program of the construction of the communism, kept all signs of class dictatorship and did not change structurally. Therefore, the cult simply changed the name, and repressions changed the form. Now people were not shot for dissidence, were not sent for «personal viewpoint» to the camps, but they were expelled from the party, were dismissed from work, and the restless seekers of truth and justice were sent to the psychiatric hospitals.

The control system /superstructure/ remained immutable, giving the rulers the «infallibility», the ability to talk to people in a haughty manner and, if needed, with the power of weapons. The society of social equality and justice, for which the true Leninists had risen, fought and worked, sacrificing health, fate, and even lives, was made null and void by the party bureaucracy, which Josepf Stalin fostered and securely brought close to himself by corrupting it with privileges.

So, whatever improvements and reforms happened in the country, nobody, even in the upper classes, wondered. And they happened. All this was shattered on the rock of the system or was stuck in an endless posh chatter, covering the deterioration of life of the people. But it is important to note that under Khrushchev there was the secretive polarization of nomenclature: division on Leninists and Stalinists. The interpersonal competition did not stop. It took the form of clan, intergroup struggle, in which Khrushchev was defeated.

The epoch of «stagnation», which penetrated further into our history as the victory of the most conservative bureaucracy, was a period of boundless connivance, where the ruling elite once again shamelessly changed the name of the cult and, against this background, was fully let loose. Without further ado, constantly covering the chest of Leonid Ilyich with stars and orders, it was engaged exclusively in its own interests, gradually getting closer to the shadow economy, which was gaining strength and momentum, by charging it with /in addition to the existing privileges/ additional material recompense.

This period was the longest because the interpersonal competition in the career struggle subsided, finding a decent compensation in the economic permissiveness. The desired results were achieved faster beyond career growth, which was excessively stretched in time. Closing his eyes and letting a lot of things happen, Brezhnev, thus, much safer hooked the nomenclature, than Stalin's privileges. But it was under Brezhnev when the opposition of the ruling class to the working people was clearly indicated. The clans, fighting with each other, were standing shoulder to shoulder against the lower classes under the slogan «economical economy» for the people and impetuous enrichment for themselves.

Then there were the agony of military and bureaucratic socialism, the succession of deaths, one after another, of the elderly people, of the worthless, unable General Secretaries, exposing the full rebirth «of the dictatorship of the proletariat» into the dictatorship of nomenclative bureaucracy.

Certainly, the workers were innocent in the dictatorship, which had been built by Stalin and on which all the following General Secretaries parasitized. It was not their power, and they themselves were not a class anymore to compete with this.

In short, socialism, built only technically and industrially, has not been brought to the integrity as a social and economic formation, with the appropriate superstructure in the form of developing democracy and local self-government, on the basis of universal democracy and freedom. Socialism was not defeated in the struggle against the foreign enemy /the American imperialism, having taken the role of the world police officer, should not appropriate the victory/ but never happened because of the constraint and even a certain ugliness of internal development, determined not by the fallacy of Marxism but its Stalin's perversion.

Stalin, having usurped power, deformed socialism and discredited it. Having put himself in the role of the standard bearer, he became, in the end, its grave-digger. It was Stalinism, to be more precise, that did not stand the test of historical practice.

Socialism, to put it bluntly, was destroyed in the covert internecine struggle of the ruling class, and between the upper and the lower classes for their share of consumer happiness. It was not that the communist idea was wrong but because the country was mostly ruled by power-loving, hungry for revenues and power, politicians, as it had happened before, who were thinking more about themselves. Instead of the full development of creation, they fought mainly for increasing the value of consumption. Having come from the top, and having secretly and criminally hardened since Stalin, the universal war of consumer ambitions, in the end, absorbed socialism.

The communists should have disassociated themselves from Stalin and Stalinism long ago, having apologized to the compatriots and all humankind for his excessive authoritarianism under the banner of communism.