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p If it is simply impossible to say on what grounds the different authors find certain organizations or groups, and not others, to be basic in the social structure of bourgeois society, it is not difficult at all to indicate the most general standpoint from which all pluralists proceed in their constructions.

p A general starting point for all conceptions of social pluralism, which is also typical of the critics of pluralism from the standpoint of state-monopoly capitalism whom we have enumerated, is that they 76 reject outright, or pass by as if non-existent, the Marxist-Leninist teaching on classes, or, more particularly, on the social and class structure of modern capitalist society.

p The champions of social pluralism base themselves first of all on the non-scientific theory of ’social stratification’, which replaces the category of ‘classes’ with the concept of ‘strata’ or ‘layers’. Moreover, they choose in an absolutely arbitrary manner those features by which they divide society into ‘strata’ or ‘layers’.Thus, for instance, at the Third International Congress of Sociology the modern American sociologist S. M. Lipset put forward (together with Zeterberg) a variant of the theory of social stratification, according to which people belong to different ‘strata’ depending upon the following features: profession or occupation; amount of consumption or standard of living; community of social interests; participation in government. Others add to these features: religion, education, race, etc. (68, C. 58-61). Among the features on which the differences between ‘strata’ are based, only production relations are missing, i.e. the relations between people in connection with the ownership of the means of production and the ways of obtaining incomes connected with this (profits, rent, salary, etc.). Yet it is the character of production relations that determines the basic social stratification in the three class socioeconomic formations: slave ownership, feudalism and capitalism.

p Individual bourgeois sociologists, guided by various considerations, use the term ‘class’ devoid of its scientific content Ralf Dahrendorf, for instance, adopts the division of people into two, and only two, ‘classes’: the class of rulers or leaders, and the class of the ruled or subordinated. According to him people are divided into classes depending upon the position which they occupy in any organization or union, because every organization or union represents a ’system of authority or power’. And according to him the relationship of authority is much more far-reaching than the property relationships among people.

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p Whoever tries, therefore, to define authority by property defines the general by the particular—an obvious logical fallacy. Wherever there is property there is authority, but not every form of authority implies property. Authority is the more general social relation. (100, p. 137). On this basis he places on an equal level, i.e. considers as equal in their essence, the social conflicts between the basic classes in capitalist society and the contradictions which may arise between the leadership and the members of any cultural or sports organization.

p It is obvious, however, that the relations of domination or subjection, based on the differing positions occupied by people in the social system of production under capitalism, which constitute the basis for the exploitation of man by man, can in no case be indentified with the relations of leadership and obedience in social processes where there does nottexista different relation of ownership between the participants. A vivid example of this fundamental difference is provided by the new relationship between the working class and the managements of the enterprises in the socialist society, as compared with the corresponding relations under capitalism.

p From what has been said above it does not follow that differences and contradictions or conflicts cannot arise between leaders and executives in any kind of organization, including the socialist enterprises. What matters is that the character of the differences, contradictions or even conflicts arising under socialism is different, and the possibilities for their solution are different in principle from the class struggle between the proleratiat and the bourgeoisie under capitalism. Differences and contradictions arising from one or another cause under socialism can be resolved and usually are resolved through the exercise of open criticism, and the taking of binding decisions by the relevant organs which eliminate the contradiction or conflict. This includes replacing bureaucratic, corrupt or simply incompetent backward leaders who are out of step with the needs of present day life by others, 78 without it being necessary for this purpose to resort to such means as strikes, let alone changing the character of the system of government.

p If the theory of social stratification gives a ‘pluralistic’ interpretation of the social structure of capitalist society which is non-scientific, but acceptable to the bourgeoisie, another theory—the theory of ’ social mobility’—is aimed at opening up some prospects before the working people of changing their social situation under capitalism. According to this theory, there exists in capitalist society the possibility of ’vertical mobility’, meaning that in principle every citizen can pass from the lowest layers and ‘strata’ to the highest and vice-versa.

p ‘Everybody can make a career and rise to the uppermost rungs of the social ladder’—this is what the supporters of the theory of social mobility try to propagate. For this purpose, it is necessary only to step on to one of the social ‘escalators’ and be able to hold on tight to it  [78•* .

p By means of this theory bourgeois ideologists wish to create in the working people the conviction that the way to improve their living standards is that of those who play roulette or take part in a lottery. Anyone can hope that he, and no one else, will be among the lucky few which the escalators of happiness will take and carry upward.

p Unlike this ‘chance’ prospect of the eventual attainment of ‘happiness’ by. a select few, under the preservation of exploitation, oppression and want for the overwhelming majority of working people in the ‘pluralistic’ bourgeois society, Marxism-Leninism 79 reveals not only the real possibility but also the historical necessity of the elimination of all forms of exploitation and oppression. In spite of the very short period since the triumph of the first socialist revolution, and in spite of the great number of unfavourable factors which have hitherto hindered the more rapid development of the socialist society, the living experience of the USSR and the other socialist nations has visually demonstrated the science-based ways and means for a rapid rise in the living and cultural standards of the working people under socialism, where there is no ‘pluralistic’ chaos but a purposeful development of society on the basis of an integrated science-based plan.

p Until not long ago, the majority of bourgeois ideologists maintained that the division of society into rich and poor, and hence into masters and subordinates, was eternal like the natural laws. The escalators of happiness may raise individual persons to the summits, but the majority of the people have always been, and will continue to be, poor and subordinated.

p In his book ’Introduction to the Philosophy of History’, i.e. in the early years of his working life (1938), R.Aron quotes a ’statistical law’ formulated by the Italian bourgeois sociologist and economist V. Pareto (1848-1923), according to which ’always and everywhere there exists a pyramid of riches’. The great majority of the people, the propertyless and the poor, form, according to this law, the wide base of the pyramid, while the handful of rich people form its pointed top. Aron finds that this was so in the past and is so now, but that it was still unknowto wkether this would be so in the future.

p In the thirties, which for the Soviet Union were years of rapid economic upswing, that was the only country which offered a practical refutation of this ‘law’ concocted in favour of the rich. After the coming into being of the world socialist system, the peoples of the one third of the globe shattered the foundations of this ‘pyramid’. The pointed top of rich men was cut off 80 in all countries which were building socialism, and a rapid upswing set in in the wellbeing of the broad masses. Certain measures in this direction are also being taken in the developing countries that have embarked upon a non-capitalist way of development.

p Under these circumstances and in the presence of mass movements against exploitation, and in favour of improving the material situation of the working people in the countries under capitalism, it is no longer possible officially to maintain the law of the ‘pyramid’. That is why many contemporary bourgeois ideologists, including R.Aron, have now embarked upon a new road. They have begun to say that what is going on in the socialist countries: the nationalization of great wealth, and above all the elimination of private ownership over the decisive means of production and the elimination of the tremendous differences in incomes between the different categories of citizens—was also being accomplished in the capitalist society, only in a different way.

p This is how conceptions of the ‘democratization’ or ‘depersonalization’ of capital, ‘dispersion’, ‘equalizing’ and even ’peaceful revolution in incomes’ arose in the developed capitalist countries. On this basis, a process of ‘deproletarization’, or an assumption of bourgeois features by the working class is said to be under way, the latter becoming increasingly ‘integrated’ with the contemporary ’industrial society’. As a result of all these processes, modern capitalism allegedly ceases to be capitalism in the old, Marxist sense of the word.

p In this connection, we shall adduce certain facts, which will refute these legends whose sole purpose is to make the working people in the capitalist countries believe that the precipice between poverty and ease can be bridged even without the socialist revolution.

p As a token of the tremendous concentration of the productive forces and wealth, and on this basis also of the centralization of management in the USA, Kariel points out that only 150 corporation account for about 50 per cent of the total industrial output. Moreover, as the author points out. the decisions in the Corporations are 81 taken by only a few people,as a result of which he concludes that the trend for oligarchic management is in general a natural result of the historical development of the industrial and economic enterprises (129, p. 30, 31). According to investigations made by the American professor R.Lempman, one per cent of the mature population in the USA owned the following percentage of the total shareholders’ capital: in 1922—61.5 per cent, in 1945-61.7 per cent, and in 1957—76 per cent. The super-rich in the USA who represent only 0.01 per cent of the American corporations, have concentrated in their hands almost one third of all their financial funds. (79, c. 150). The continuing process of accumulating wealth is revealed by the fact that in the period from 1948-1965 the number of millionaires in the USA increased sevenfold (19, c. 57).

p However, at the end of the sixties there were 45 million poor citizens in the USA, 30 million of whom were categorized by the government as living in want (68, c. 46). The distrubution of wealth in Britain is not much different. According to 1960 data, one per cent of the country’s population over the age of 25 possessed 42 per cent of the country’s total personal wealth. (33, c. 7). The situation is similar in the Federal German Republic: 1.7 per cent of the population, i.e. the multimillionaires and millionaires from the big trusts owned in 1970 more than 70 per cent of the means of production (122, S. 6).

There is a sufficiency of convincing facts to refute the assertion of A.Berle and many other bourgeois ideologists that the shareholding form of capital means a disappearance of private ownership, because the rich no longer rule in those corporations. It is not all, but only a few, the biggest shareholders, who actually rule the shareholding companies. Moreover, as M.Ryndina points out ’actually to manage a shareholding enterprise, it is enough for you to own the control package of shares, which is about 20 per cent of the total amount of shares and sometimes even less’ (72, c. 304). In other words, the shareholding companies help to increase the concentration of capital and power of the biggest

82 capitalists and do not eliminate it, nor do they diminish it. Thus, from about 19 million people who own shares in the USA, about 2,000 are among the biggest shareholders (i.e. 0.01 per cent of the total number) and play an active and decisive role in management, i.e. they are the men who manage the corporations (19, c. 84).

p Zbignev Brzezinski is one of those bourgeois ideologists and political scientists who strives, with the arguments of pluralism, to reject the Marxist way of doing away with private ownership over the means of production, by counterposing to it another ‘evolutionary’ way of change. In recognizing indirectly the outdatedness of capitalist private ownership and the sharpness of the conflict between the productive forces and production relations in the USA and the other imperialist countries, Brzezinski calls an ’extreme solution’ the only possible solution of this conflict—the socialization of production, which has been effected in the socialist countries. He counterposes to this the changes brought about by present-day state-monopoly capitalism in the Western countries, presenting them as a ’depersonalization of ownership’ and a ’limited sharing of power by the capitalists with the organized work force’. To disguise still further the unchanged exploiting nature of capitalism, Brzezinski says: ’The question of ownership was thus redefined into one of control and regulation, while the issue of exploitation associated with ownership was replaced by new problems concerning the economic participation and psychological wellbeing of the employed’ (95, p. 261). Brzezinski calls all these measures taken together ’pluralismof participation’ in modern capitalist society (p. 262).

p Brzezinski refers to the shareholding form of capital as ‘depersonalization’, i.e. ,‘effacement’ of ownership. However, the joint-stock form of capital only in part hides the names of the biggest capitalists who continue to exploit the labour of the working class and to manage production.Moreover, as we have just seen, the joint-stock form even makes it easier for the big capitalists to impose their will on the smaller 83 shareholders in the monopolies or individual joint stock companies. Hence the ‘depersonalization’ of capital is only a form through which the power and manoeuvrability of big capital is enhanced, without in the least changing its exploiting nature.

p As to the ‘participation’ of workers and employees in profits (through the purchase of a few shares) and in the ‘management’ of the capitalist enterprises (through their representatives in the various advisory bodies), these measures are mostly of a demagogical character and are aimed to deceive the workers.

p Norbert Leser is one of the pluralists who formally accepts the class structure of modern capitalist society. He even tries to flirt with the name Karl Marx. However, this does not hinder him, in outright contradiction with Marxism and with the facts of life, from asserting that both sides at the front in the class struggle, had realized that the ’other side’ could not be expelled from society. The fact is that the replacement of capitalist production relations by socialist production relations has led to the disappearance of the ’one side’, the bourgeoisie, in a great number of states, including states neighbouring on Austria, Leser’s homeland. Hand in hand with all his fellow-pluralists, Leser also suggests ’acceptance and recognition of a society with a conflicting structure’. On this basis he recommends the pursuit of a policy of blunting and in part softening the irreconcilable social contradictions. In turning his attention more particularly to the ’middle strata’ which must be used as buffers, he maintains that ’pluralism gave precedence to the group life of the middle strata’ (138, S. 91, 92).

Leser is right in saying that the middle social strata, owing to their objective intermediary position between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, can be used by the bourgeoisie as ‘buffers’ to blunt the class struggle, and this has repeatedly happened. However, as V.I.Lenin very convincingly pointed out and the triumphant socialist revolutions have confirmed it, the middle strata can with even greater justification be won over as 84 lasting allies of the proletariat in the struggle against capitalism. Under state-momopoly capitalism, ihis possibility becomes still greater.