[PRWC Party Documents] Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade, April 22, 1972

Pomeroy's Portrait: Revisionist Renegade

Apologia for Soviet Revisionism

II. On The All-Round Restoration Of Capitalism

Basahin sa Pilipino

Amado Guerrero

April 22, 1972

Revolutionary School of Mao Tse Tung Thought, Communist Party of the Philippines

The great Lenin said: "Politics cannot but have precedence over economics. To argue differently means forgetting the ABC of Marxism." And Chairman Mao reiterates their Marxist-Leninist view: "Ideology and politics are the commander, the soul in everything. Economic and technical work are bound to go wrong if we in the least slacken our ideological and political work." In a socialist society, therefore, all proletarian revolutionaries are duty-bound to follow his teaching: "Grasp revolution, promote production"

It is utterly wrong to make production take the place of revolution or put the former in command of the latter. Thus, it is a desecration for Pomeroy and his Soviet revisionist masters to "celebrate" the 50th anniversary of the Great October Revolution in the following spirit:

There are red banners and mass demonstrations on occasion, but mainly for the holiday; they are not for making the demands but for celebrating progress measured in the organizational report, the statistical table, the computer... Today's revolution goes on in the workshop and laboratory.

This is bourgeois philistinism, pure and simple!

It is in this spirit that Pomeroy claims the Soviet Union to be the "most advanced socialist country" and to be "on a level higher, more complex and further developed than those reached by its brothers of the new soiety". What he considers as the "greatest significance" of the 50th year of the Soviet Union is that "a new communist society of abundance for all is on the immediate program of the present generation" and that "industry is now gearing itself to pour out the abundance that can satisfy the increasingly sophisticated wants and desires of the people". All because of "new techniques", he boasts that there is already "superabundance" in the Soviet Union. He prates:

What typically truobles people in the Soviet Union now is not where to find the next pound of potatoes but where to find the newest model television, while the line for trousers is in the process of being replaced by the waiting list for an automobile.

But is this the truth?

Within his own book, Pomeroy fails to be consistent with his lies and slaps his own face repeatedly. He reports that in his land of "superabundance" he saw several streets beggars and these were not supposed to shake his faith in the socialist label tacked by his Soviet revisionist masters on their system. While he argues for the putting of principal stress on private ownership of cars as a material incentive, he reports that the public transport system is gravely inadequate and inefficient throuhgout the Soviet Union. While he argues for putting principal stress on private ownership of flats and villas as material incentive, he reports that there are long waiting lists for accommodation in public tenements, that residents in overcrowded tenements are grouchy, that there are those who collect high rent privately and that blackmarketing of construcion materials is spawned by private construction. While he argues for the expansion of private plots and personal subsidiary husbandry, he cites specific data proving that these have been attended to at the expense of the collective farms. While he boasts that there has been no shortage in the basic commodities as potatoes and trousers, he reports that Khrushchov was cast away by his successors on account of agricultural shortages that included potato and cotton. He also testifies that there are long queues and bitter wranglings over scare goods at department store in such show-window cities as Moscow and Leningrad.

There is certainly no superabundance for the Soviet people. Those who enyoy the "superabundance" touted by Pomeroy belong to the privileged bourgeois stratum. They are the "managers", "experts" and "professionals" who plunder the social wealth of the Soviet Union. They have high incomes that are ten, a hundred or even a thousand times more than the income of the average worker. As Pomeroy himself confesses, they are the ones who can afford to buy the automobiles manufactured by Fiat and Renault and also to buy their own flats so that they can be saved from the "inconvenience" suffered by the masses.

Under the present circumstances in the Soviet Union, it is simply preposterous for Pomeroy and his revisionist masters to peddle the hope that within ten years (1967-77) passenger transport will be free and rent will no longe be collected. Big promises are made by the Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique obviously in order to blame failure later on their signboard of socialism and further justify the brazen restoration of capitalism. Khrushchov in his own time made big promises about "builiding the material and techical foundation of communism". When he failed to fullfill these promises, his successors went on to accelerate the restoration of capitalism in the style of further drinking poison to quench thirst.

Let us sample the rotten and selfish bourgeois arguments of Pomeroy. Regarding the private ownership of cars: "Anyone who has been embedded in the rush-hour Moscow metro crowds can appreciate the urge to buy car on the part of a commuting resident in a remote district." Regarding the private ownership of flats:

One of the advantages in owning a flat is that it can be remodeled or partitioned to the owner's liking, whereas in government housing permission for this must be obtained from the authorities. The greatest impulse in buying a lot, however, is that new living space can be obtained faster in this way; normally people wait for a long period on a listt for new public housing.

It is not clear that the Soviet privileged bourgeois stratum lives it up at the expense of the Soviet people?

The "increasingly sophisticated wants and desires" of the privileged bourgeois stratum, as Pomeroy himself picturesquely discribes them, include the adoption of the miniskirt, the imitation of American jazz in the youth cafes and the approximation of the latest styles and colors in London and New York by the house of Modes in Moscow. Of course, these quiddities of the West are mere indicators of the gross luxury and decadence that characterize the high living enjoyed by the privileged bourgeois stratum. Pomeroy calls these "progress".

In an attempt to distort the Marxist-Leninist criticism that the Soviet privileged bourgeois stratum exploits the Soviet working people, Pomeroy claims that it is the "increase in living standards and in material well-being "denigrated" as capitalism by Marxist-Leninists. Childishly, he tries to counter Chairman Mao's criticism of the restoration of capitalism by reffering to the fact that he ate sumptous food at the residence of a friend if his who obviously belongs to the privileged bourgeois stratum. The profits of capitalism are, indeeded, enjoyed by this privileged bourgeois stratum. The Soviet masses, on the other hand, suffer increasing impoverishment, unemployment, rising prices, shortages of supplies, shoddy goods and the like.

What the Soviet modern revisionists mean by "merging personal interest and public interest" is all too clear. It is the imposition of the personal interests of a few, the privileged bourgeois stratum, on the interests of the people.

Pomeroy actually makes brazen attacks on Marxism-Leninism, particularly dialectical materialim, when he pontificates: "The contrasting of personal and social interests, attempts to treat the personal interest as something incompatible with the ideals of the revolution, all this is opposed to the principles of socialism." There is a contradiction between self-interest and public interest. To deny this contradiction is to cover up self-interest and push modern revisionism forward.

Thus, it is important to always remember that as we serve people, we must fight self and repudiate revisionism. True Communists are unselfish and their concern is always to serve the people. They will always see to it that the people are first assured of their basic necessities and the general level of livelihood is constantly raised, with no wide gaps between the cadre and the average worker. Centralized planning by the proletariat is used in a socialist society essentially to see to it that as production is raised. In the people's livelihood is better assured and is far better than in the Soviet Union despite the latter's claim of "technical superiority".

Let us go into the concrete meaning of the a certain statement made by Brezhnev at the 23rd Congress of the CPSU:

The slow development of the agriculture was due to a violation of the economic laws of production, neglect of the material incentives and of the correct combination of public and personal interests.

Khrushchov is hereby blamed by his successor for not expanding the private plots fast enough and for not developing the private economy in agriculture fast enough. In this regard, Pomeroy reports:

During the premiership of Khruschov (who has been criticized for disregard of the economic sciences) there were severe restrictions on cultivation of private plots by those belonging to collective farms. The restriction were eliminated after the ouster of Khrushchov.

Pomeroy also faults the collectivization carried out by the great proletarian founders of the first socialist state. He fails:

"Backwardness" in agriculture is not wholly due to the willful neglect of economic laws. The great difficulty in the collectivization that began almost four decades ago was that the mechanization essential to the process was not sufficiently available, while the peasantry, still rooted in the age-old backwardness of small-holding cultivation, was not technologically prepared for the new system.

The modern revisionists put mechanization and technique ahead of politics and cooperation and collectivization. They adhere to the theory of "productive forces" -- the theory of fostering capitalism on the pretext of waiting for machines. And yet even as they boast of a high technological level now, they rapidly revert to a kulak economy in agriculture and destroy the basis of socialist agriculture. They attack the establishment of Chinese communes in the same spirit that they have wrecked socialist agriculture in the Soviet Union. It is well to remember that there would have been no basis for rapid industrialization in China and had there been no firm and consistent raising of the levels of agricultural cooperation and had there been no effective repudiation of Liu Shao-chi's own adherence to the theory of "productive forces".

Soviet modern revisionism has brought down the living standards and reduced the material well-being of Soviet people. Disastrous economic results followed Khrushchov's treacherous act of raising to a state policy the imitation of the techniques of capitalist management in the United States. But, instead of discarding that rotten policy, the Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique has blamed Khrushchov only for not outdoing himself in elaborating on and implementing the capitalsit tehcniques of management. The revisionist programme of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU is a common ground for the Khrushchov-Brezhnev revisionist renegades. Its essence is the restoration of capitalism. That is what the Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique calls "following the scientific laws of economic". And in this regard, Pomeroy arrogantly repeats a reactionary statement from Pravda: "But the fact that a law leads to consequences undesirable to us does not stop its being a law and a law cannot be declared ineffective, just because people ignore it." This is a bourgeois metaphysical statement which runs counter to the Marxist-Leninist law that the people are the motive force of history. What impudence!

The Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique gets the most lavish praise from Pomeroy for making a "profound adjustment" in the Soviet economic system since 1965. This is the "new economic system", otherwise called "economic reform" which establishes in a legal form the capitalist principle of profit for the benefit of the oligarchy of the big monopoly bureaucrats and the privileged bourgeois stratum, all at the expense of the Soviet working people. Its new feature is supposed to be the provision of material incentives, such as a bonuses and other pay increases, for profitable management in an enterprise. It dictates the practice of capitalist management in all fields of the Soviet economy and it sanctifies the bonus as a "moral stimulus". It involves the complete disruption of the socialiet relations of production and the thorough breaking up of the socialist economic base. The socialist economic system of unified economic planning by the state is abolished in favor of the anarchy of enterprises and farms operated on the basis of profit-seeking.

In this regard, Pomeroy gloats: "Planning and distribution in the previous condition of scarcity is not the same as planning and distribution in a growing condition of abundance."He blathers:

It is at the level of the industrial enterprise that material incentives are being given their greatest emphasis. Hard economic facts have shown that centralized planning and the quota system of production at this stage of development do not enable the fullest efficient use of the plant and equipment. These aims, it is felt, can be more completely achieved by linking the personal interest of the worker with what he is producing, i.e. by tying added income to efficient and good work.

This statement is in line with Kosygin's statement in 1965:

The present-day scientific and technical revolution advances to the fore such problems as technical standards, quality, reliability of goods and their effective use. It is precisely these factors that are today the focus of peaceful economic competition between socialist and capitalist countries.

Pomeroy gives the following as "the two main steps that comprise the heart of economic reform": "giving of much greater degree of responsibility to the individual enterprise for planning, for production, for the intorduction of new technology, for the accumulation and use of profits, and for arranging the sale of its products"; and greater emphasis on material incentives for workers in order to increase their effeciency and their output"

"Much greater degrees of responsibility to the individual enterprises" actually means further disintegrating and fragmenting the Soviet economy and reinforcing the overlord position of bourgeois managers and directors in individual enterprises. "Greater emphasis on material incentives for workers" actually means allowing the bourgeois managers and directors to treat the workers as wage slaves and get for themselves the profits of the enterprises. Pomeroy himself observes:

The expansion of the enterprises' rights and the strengthening of economic stimulation can give rise to parochial tendencies, to setting the interests of the enterprise against the interests of society, and even to money-grubbing...

Pomeroy also quotes Soviet "experts" Oleg Yun, who states:

The new system of industrial management and planning substantially extends the right of factory managers... in the sphere of planning, capital construction and repairs, introduction of more advanced technology and up-to-date techniques, material and technical supplies, marketing of finished goods, finance, labor and wages,etc.

The "new economic system" gives the enterprise the authority to "own, use and dispose of" all property; to sell "surplus" equipment, means of transport,raw materials, materials and fuel; to let the premises, warehouses, equipment and means of transport which are "temporarily not in use"; to write off on their own initiative "obsolute" assets; to use "funds at their disposal" for capital construction that is "outside the plan". There is a wide ground for nefarious manipulation of assets. Managers even sell for profit such means of production as machine tools, hoists, generators, locomotives and seamless tubes which are supposed to be state property. Soviet enterprises make profits on each other. Means of production and raw materials are also finding their way into private enterprises.

The managers are given the power to fix or change the wages, grades and bonuses for the workers and staff, to recruit or lay off workers and mete out punishment to them, and to decide at will the structure and personnel of the enterprises. The ensuing results is the emergence of a grave problem of unemployment in the Soviet Union. Unemployment has developed on a large scale for two reasons: an enterprise goes bankrupt and is dissolved or workers are laid off or classified as apprentices to allow the managers and directors to claim bigger profits for themselves. In short, the enterprise of socialist ownership have been turned into capitalist undertakings by the privileged bourgeois stratum, and broad sections of working people in industry and agriculture have turned into wage slaves who have to sell their labor power. In the face of the grave problem of unemployment in the Soviet Union, Pomeroy can only shamelessly make the false claim that there is even labor shortage there.

Class polarization has been aggravated as a result of the "economic reform". The leaders of industrial enterprises, "state farms" and commercial establishments draw high pay and bonuses which are scandalously several times more than those of the workers; enjoy high allowances and other special privileges; and indulge in unlawful practices such as manipulation of accounts, speculation, blackmarketing and underground enterprises. They grossly abuse their power, and exploits and oppress the working people.

The enterprises are willing to produce only what they individually deem to be profitable, thus causing economic dislocation and gross disproportion in the overall development of the economy and shortages in basic commodities, raw materials and spare parts. Enterprise engaged in the same line of production compete with each other. To exact high profits, they keep on raising prices. They also raise profits covertly by using inferior materials, thus turning out goods of every poor quality.

Though there is anarchy in the relationship of Soviet enterprises due to capitalist competition, there is inevitably the trend towards accumulation and concentration. Small and weak enterprises are drawn by big and strong enterprises into large-scale amalgamations in order to bring the principle of profit into full play and give maximum profits to the monopoly bureaucrat bougeoisie. The amalgamations become independent business accounting units and become real monopolies. The new economic system" harps on the autonomy of individual business enterprises only because it aims to destroy the principle of unified socialist planning and build up the kind of centralization demanded by state monopoly capitalism. An example of a huge monopoly enterprise in the Soviet Union today is the Ministry of Investments and Automation Tools, an independent business accounting ministry.

"Economic reform" in the countryside has brought about a private economy -- a kulak economy. Socialist restrictions on private plots and private livestock have been removed. Pomeroy himself unwittingly provides us some 1966 data (though these are watered down, they are still very revealing) which show the anti-socialist course in agriculture. According to him, "personal subsidiary husbandry" involved only "three per cent" of the country's cultivated land yet it accounted for about "17 per cent" of the national agricultural production. Within this total figure are: 60 per cent of the national potato crop, 40 per cent of the national crop of green vegetables, 40 per cent of the national production of dressed meat, 39 per cent of the national milk production and 68 per cent of the national egg production. With his twisted anti-socialist logic, Pomeroy argues that the private plots and private livestock should be enlarged because they have produced so much. This is supposed to be in compliance with the "scientific laws of economics". He completely disregards the fact that the collective and state farms have been neglected in favor of the private plots.

Every household is ordinarilly allowed a private plot of one-half hectare and to own cattle and other livestock. Collective farms are allowed to provide machinery to individual members to till their private plots, transport facilities to market their products, pastures for their private livestock and loans for purchasing more livestock. While it appears that the private tillers and owners of livestock stand to gain much, they are eventually manipulated by a few private merchants in the course of free competition. The leaders of state and collective farms easily assure themselves of the status of kulaks and merchants by alloting larger private plots to themselves, employing hired laborers to till them and resorting to every trick within their power.

Going farther, the Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique has turned over state and collective farms to "field teams" composed of only one to three households which arrange production independently, employ hired laborers and do their own accounting. Nationalized lands have also been distributed to "teams" for long-term lease and private cultivation. Those state and collective farms which still formally present themselves as such have been completely put on a capitalist basis. The leaders of these farms have a free hand in production, marketing, competition, hiring of laborers and appropriating profits for themselves. As the state demands an ever increasing quota of produce (especially grain) to be sold to itself, the leaders always manage to pass on the burden to the peasant masses and farm workers.

To support what actually amounts to private ownership of agriclutural land, the Soviet revisionist renegades have lifted all restrictions on the prices of agricultural produce and livestock products in the free markets. Capitalist free markets have been created on a large scale and free competitions operates rampantly to the satisfaction of big private merchants. Large free markets with modern facilities and hotels for private merchants have been constructed at huge costs. Industrial products and even means of production are also peddled in these free markets. Agricultural and industrial commodities not available in the "state stores" could be bought at the free markets at high prices. Commodities produced by underground factories are also sold here. The "state stores" have also turned to profit-seeking and free competition. A state of confusion reigns in the entire commercial sector at the expense of the people.

To build "communism", the Soviet revisionist renegades have turned to seeking aid from foreign monopoly groups. Brezhnev has turned into reality Khrushchov's wish "to accept credits from the devil himself". It has gotten loans from American, French, Italian, and Japanese monopoly capitalist combines. It has begged for loans from West Germany by bartering away the sovereign interests of the German Democratic Republic. It has invited Japan into Siberia and has to sold out Soviet natural resources in the process. It is shockingly shameless for a country that claims to be "socialist" to beg for loans from entities defeated during World War II. According to Pomeroy himself, the Soviet Union puts "considerable emphasis" on the importation of the consumer goods from the imperialist countries despite its claims to superabundance.

On the basis of the all-round restoration of capitalism, the Soviet Union has become social-imperialist, exploiting and reducing a number of East European countries and the Mongolian People's Republic into its colonies. These colonies have been turned by Soviet social-imperialism into orchards, subsidiary processing shops, sources of raw materials, fields of investments and dumping ground for Soviet industrial products. Brezhnev has aggravated Khruschov's policy of the "international division of labor" which dictates on the members of the COMECON to serve the needs of Soviet monopoly bureaucrat capitalism.

The claws of Soviet social-imperialism have also extended far into other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It pretends to extend long-term loans at a nominal interest rate of two-and-a-half per cent. But in fact it delivers shoddy goods that are overpriced. Soviet social-imperialism is also a big munitions merchant, which arbitrary prices the arms and ammunition it sells to various countries and thereby extracts huge profits. To India and United Arab Republic, it delivers to the weapons of the better quality than those it has delivered to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam simply because these countries pay hard currency or pay in kind with local commodities that are greatly underpriced.

In line with its social-imperialist and social-fascist character, the Soviet Union has steadily engaged in social-imperialism. Its economic activity is more and more geared to arms expansion and war preparations. It would rather produce guns than butter. The 1970 military budget of the Soviet Union is 100 per cent higher than its 1966 military budget. Though the income of the Soviet people is only 60 per cent of the income of the American people, the Soviet Union spends annually for its war machine an amount comparable to the annual U.S. military expenditures.

The overall economic situation in the Soviet Union was bad enough in 1967, when Pomeroy wrote his book. But it has become even worse in succedding years as a result of the "new economic system" or "economic reform" pushed by the Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique. Under the leadership of Stalin, Soviet industry used to develop at a high speed. Taking for example the 1950-53 period, the average annual rate of growth of Soviet industry stood at 16 per cent. But this dropped to 9.6 per cent during the nine years following the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 under Khrushchov. This further dropped to 8.5. per cent during the five years since Brezhnev assumed power in 1965. Despite the boastful claims of Pomeroy and his Soviet revisionist masters about the "higher level of techniques" of today, the growth rates of labor productivity have consistently gone down in the Soviet Union.

The shortage of industrial products has become more and more acute because of the disproportionate development of production in various branches. The Soviet revisionist renegades admits that the variety of steel products in 1970 could meet only half of the actual needs and that many departments in need of steel products could not get them. Great difficulties also attended the supply of fuel for public utilities and domestic use. Nearly all the union republics suffered from shortage of building materails and parts. Work came to a standstill in many factories for lack of raw materials.

Brezhnev has done worse than Khrushchov in the field of agriculture. Based on the doctored statistics officially released by the revisionist renegades themselves, the per capita grain output in the Soviet Union in the 1965-69 period was 16 kilograms less than in 1964, the year of Khruschov's downfall; the per capita cotton output -- the main economic crop -- stagnated in 1969; the per capita output of potatoes, vegetables, etc, seriously fell. The situation in animal husbandry was even worse. The per capita head of oxen, pigs and sheep went down sharply at the end of 1969 as compared with that at the end of 1915. Without enough supply of vegetables and beef, Brezhnev certainly cannot make "goulash" communism as Khrushchov before him was not able to.

The 1966-70 "five-year economic plan" of Brezhnev revisionist renegade clique fell far below its already low targets. Instead of raising the living standards of the people. it has merely raised their costs of living. Basic commodities. including bread, salt and matchsticks, are in short supply, have poor quality and are highly priced in the Soviet Union. It is absolutely foolish for Pomeroy to imagine "superabundance" or hope for it with the use of capitalist methods by his Soviet revisionist masters.The Soviet working people are suffering the heavily; and the root of their suffering is the all-round restoration of capitalism by the Khrushchov-Brezhnev revisionist renegades.