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p Ilya Dvorkin, D. Sc. (Econ.)

p The ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism asserts itself with special force in political economy. Marx wrote that “. . . the development of political economy and of the antithesis to which it gives rise keeps pace with the real development of the social contradictions and class conflicts inherent in capitalist production".  [227•1  The antithesis to bourgeois political economy that Marx had in mind was the political economy of the working class.

p In our time the development of bourgeois political economy, as also that of its antithesis—Marxist-Leninist political economy—keeps in step not only with the development of the contradictions of production under modern statemonopoly capitalism and with the class battles in the capitalist countries but also with the growth of the world socialist system of production, with the changes in the balance of power between capitalism and socialism. This compels bourgeois scholars to evolve their own “economic theories of socialism" to counter the Marxist-Leninist political economy of socialism.

p There are three basic trends in the bourgeois economic theory of socialism. The first trend, which was known already in Marx’s time, attempts to pass off bourgeois relations as socialist relations or something very similar to them. This is bourgeois socialism, which, as the Communist Manifesto points out “... requires in reality that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should 228 cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie".  [228•1 

p The advocates of the bourgeois socialism of those days understood changing the material conditions of life by no means as “. . . abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations.. .".  [228•2  They had no objection to certain reforms that would cure some of the social ills of those days, but the meaning and purpose of these reforms was to consolidate bourgeois society. The advocates of this type of socialism regarded capitalism with a few adjustments and renovations as the best of all possible worlds.

p The development of pre-monopoly capitalism into monopoly and state-monopoly capitalism has been accompanied by a significant evolution in bourgeois concepts of socialism. In a number of countries theories are being widely developed in which the transition from free competition to monopoly, the regulation of economic life to reduce unemployment and crises, and the steps towards nationalisation undertaken by the bourgeois state are presented as “socialisation” of the capitalist economy. The reforms which in a number of instances the bourgeois state has been compelled to introduce through fear of the growing influence of the socialist countries and intensified struggle by the working class ( unemployment benefits, old-age pensions, etc.) are being presented by bourgeois economists as “socialist” measures. Capitalism is described as the “welfare state" and the “consumer society”, in which incomes are supposed to have been levelled and exploitation and antagonism between classes eliminated. Some bourgeois and Right-wing socialist economists try to present the very system of state-monopoly capitalism, with its state intervention in the process of reproduction and its adoption of methods of programming and forecasting, as “semi-socialism” or the “Western form of socialism”, thus reducing socialism to a mere series of administrative reforms.

p Whereas in Marx’s time theories of bourgeois socialism remained outside the framework of bourgeois political economy, they have now become an integral part of it.

p The second form of bourgeois economic theory studies the 229 economic relations in existing socialist society. Bourgeois political economy has always regarded the capitalist system as the absolute and ultimate form of social production.

p The time has long since passed, however, when bourgeois economists could declare the socialist form of ownership and the planned socialist economy as something contradictory to human nature and the laws of economic progress, when Hayek, Mises and others preached the inevitable economic collapse of socialism merely because it had liquidated the sacred bourgeois right of private property, capitalist profit and the vagaries of the market as the motive forces of the economy.

p The founding and consolidation of a socialist system based on social ownership and on economic laws fundamentally different from those of capitalism has undermined the traditional pillars of bourgeois political economy. Bourgeois economists have accordingly set out to evolve their own “ political economy of socialism”. They create theories explaining from the bourgeois standpoint the existence and operation of the economic laws of socialism, planning in socialist society, the cost accounting of socialist enterprises and commodity-money relations, and the peculiarities of socialist reproduction. The works of these economists are permeated with bourgeois prejudice and prove that they are unable and unwilling to understand the economic laws of the new society. Compelled in the interests of the monopolies and the ideological defence of capitalism to study socialist economy, they do so with the deliberate aim of condemning communism, of giving a distorted and falsified picture of the economic laws of socialism.

p The advocates of the third trend of the bourgeois economic theory of socialism, which emerged in the late fifties, endeavour to prove that the modern capitalist and the socialist systems of economy resemble each other, and that any remaining distinctions will disappear in the course of further economic development. This “new society" of the second half of the 20th century, bourgeois ideologists maintain, will be a “mixed economy”, preserving private property as its basis.

p The emergence of this group of “economic theories" is a specific reflection in the bourgeois political economy of the third stage of the general crisis of capitalism. Compelled to 230 acknowledge the invincibility of the world socialist system and its deep-rooted vitality, the bourgeois economists can no longer openly and consistently defend capitalism as a system of economy fundamentally different from socialism, and they try to justify monopoly capitalism and its alliance with state power on the grounds that the socialist and capitalist forms of production are basically identical.

p Naturally, the advocates of such bourgeois economic theories of socialism attack the Marxist political economy of socialism, which analyses the socialist mode of production, reveals its specific laws of development and how they differ from the laws of the capitalist mode of production.

p R. Dubs, the West German economist, writes: “Marxist political economy divides this science into two mutually isolated fields—the political economy of capitalism and the political economy of socialism.” This division, if adhered to, he continues, will “never lead to a drawing together of the Western and Eastern economic systems”. The Marxist world outlook with its historical materialism, “sets relatively narrow limits to the development and adjustment of the political economy of socialism".  [230•1 

p Thus, R. Dubs proposes that Marxists should give up studying the laws of socialism and instead seek its points of “identity” with capitalism. On the other hand, he urges bourgeois economists not to entertain any illusions about the possibility of the economy of the USSR turning capitalist as a result of economic reform. This, he says, is ruled out as long as the leaders of the socialist countries “continue to cling to Marxist dogma" on the laws of the development of socialism as a new socio-economic form of production. Dubs accordingly advocates discarding dogma and ideology as a means of converting the socialist economy into a capitalist one.

p To reveal the nature of the new trend of bourgeois economic theories of socialism, we must make a brief survey of the changes that have come about in the productive forces since the Second World War, while the two world systems —socialism and capitalism—have been coexisting and 231 competing, changes which are usually summed up as the scientific and technological revolution.

p Bourgeois political economy lost no time in using this revolution as an apology for capitalism and inventing new bourgeois theories of socialism, the specific feature of which at this new stage is that they endeavour to strip the productive forces of any definite social character. The question of who owns the means of production is declared to be of no importance, while the scientific and technological revolution is elevated to the status of some self-sufficing essence, which can develop unobstructedly and endlessly both under capitalism and under socialism.

p Daniel Bell, for example, declares that thanks to the scientific and technological revolution both the socialist and capitalist economies will provide “full abundance for all”. This marks the emergence in bourgeois economic science of the trend which treats the economic development of both social systems merely as scientific and technological progress. According to bourgeois economists, under capitalism this progress becomes an instrument for the attainment of “ universal welfare”, “universal affluence”, and the “affluent society”. The antagonistic classes—the proletariat and the bourgeoisie—“disappear” because workers at enterprises and owners are supposed to be equally interested in increasing productivity. According to these economists, the scientific and technological revolution will bring about class harmony under capitalism, while socialist society will acquire features resembling those of capitalist society.

p The bourgeois technological theory of the “industrial society”, which is widely used against Marxism as a counterweight to the successes of the socialist countries, is a synthesis of bourgeois theories of the “socialisation” of modern capitalism and bourgeois theories of the economy of socialism. Such an economic theory of socialism could emerge only because socialist industrialisation has transformed the USSR into the second largest industrial power in the world, while the hopes of the capitalists that the socialist states would go economically bankrupt have failed to materialise, and because it has become obvious to everyone that socialism cannot be destroyed by force of arms.

p The term “industrial society" appears to have little meaning. It is defined merely as a “society with a developed 232 industry”. However, its meaning is more profound than would at first glance appear.

p The champions of this theory set out to depict socialism and capitalism as variants of the same type of society, based on a high development of the productive forces. They base this argument on the conditions modern science and technology create both under capitalism and under socialism. On these grounds R. Aron considers the capitalist variant of the “industrial society" just as progressive as the Soviet, socialist variant. The aim, of course, is to substantiate the view that it is unnecessary to replace capitalism by socialism and, hence, there is no point in fighting for such a cause.

p Some of the champions of this theory advocate parallel existence of the two systems, so that they will never clash, but, as Bell writes, “flourish” side by side. This means that if the capitalist form of the “industrial society" is progressive, capitalism should be consolidated in the name of “ progress”, and not fought. Capitalism, it appears, need only be “improved” and all fundamental differences between capitalism and socialism will vanish. Here we have the real, underlying class meaning of the latest forms of bourgeois socialism.

p The champions of the above theory see the essence of the two variants of the “progressive industrial society”, socialist and capitalist, in the fact that in both there are huge factories and technological division of labour in production, that in both of them industrial enterprises accumulate capital and pursue a policy of reducing costs, that in both of them workers are concentrated in individual enterprises, efforts are made to use labour, science and technology in the most rational manner, to raise the educational level, to improve managerial organisation, to raise productivity, etc.

p One could enumerate such common features ad infinitum. Undeniably, in this sense both socialist and capitalist society are industrial. But this implies that socialism is possible only if industry and the productive forces have reached the high level of development which capitalism creates. And yet, no matter how great the similarity of the two opposing systems as regards their productive forces, it is not this that is decisive to a knowledge of the economic laws of the development of socialism and capitalism, to an 233 understanding of the qualitative, fundamental differences between the two economic systems.

p The theory of the “industrial society" is a bourgeois interpretation of the peaceful coexistence of the two socioeconomic systems. By referring to the “technological” or “ scientific” society bourgeois economists seek to excuse the existence of capitalism, using coexistence of the two systems as its apology. At the same time, ignoring the form of social production, they try to counterpose the “united” socialist and capitalist “industrial societies" to the developing countries.

p These principles were advanced in a general form by R. Aron and have been elaborated by H. Mayrzedt and H. Rome, whose views may be summed up as follows. In the course of their coexistence, and as a result of scientific and technological progress, the industrial capitalist and socialist countries tend to converge. At the same time these industrial countries of the northern hemisphere become estranged from those in the southern hemisphere. The contradiction between capitalism and socialism is thus being replaced by a “global” contradiction between North and South. The champions of this view hypocritically call this phenomenon the “class struggle" of the last third of the 20th century. “We have attempted,” Mayrzedt and Romé write, “to counter the class struggle between the capitalist and socialist countries, the class struggle being propagandised by the Communists, with a conception of class struggle . . . between the industrial and developing countries, between North and South."  [233•1 

p Thus, the theorists of the technological form of bourgeois socialism endeavour to alienate the Soviet Union, the socialist community, from the developing countries, their natural allies in the struggle against imperialism.

p The theory of the “industrial society" is part of the technological trend, the methodology of which is mechanistic materialism. This trend rejects subjectivism and psychologism, the basis of most schools of bourgeois political economy, and also the descriptive method of the historical school and of the institutionalists.

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p Not only has the technological revolution led to the emergence of new applied economic subjects (the economics of education, the economics of management, economic programming, etc.). Embracing, as it does, all aspects of the productive forces, it has spread even to the general theory of political economy and given birth to new trends there. A major role in this process has been played by John Galbraith, who in 1967 published the book The New Industrial State. In this book he uses the methodology of the technological trend to consider the politico-economic problems arising out of the scientific and technological revolution.

p This work argues the “identity” of modern capitalism and socialism, and for this reason alone it can be considered the most developed bourgeois economic theory of socialism in recent times. This “identity” is based on the development of the modern productive forces, especially technological progress. Already in The Affluent Society, published in 1958, Galbraith attempted to prove that modern developed bourgeois society (notably US society) had reached a level of development that ensured abundance to all. In his last work he rejected the thesis because he could not deny that there was poverty and unemployment in the USA. Now Galbraith includes in the “industrial system" only the five or six hundred biggest corporations in the USA. In this cleverly restricted “industrial society”, the author believes, the basic laws of capitalist society have been transformed as a result of the scientific and technological revolution into noncapitalist laws: technology transforms capitalism into a variant of socialism.

p Galbraith admires technology, almost deifies it. “ Technology, having an initiative of its own, is the logical point at which to break in. But technology not only causes change, it is a response to change. Though it requires extensive organisation it is also the result of organisation.” Under the pretext that modern technology demands increased capital for accumulation, and a longer cycle of turnover, the author asserts that modern giant corporations are nothing but a product of technology. He describes corporations of the General Motors type as essentially socialist enterprises existing in conditions where capitalist relations are only formally operating. Modern technology, Galbraith writes, leads to planning and abolishes the market mechanism. He includes 235 in a single category both internal planning by individual firms and state control and programming. The author maintains that technology compels the corporations to seek a union with the state. “Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political wile, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state. This is a consequence of advanced technology. . . .”

p “Industrial society,” Galbraith continues, “is the product, result and expression of technological progress. Since both capitalist and socialist societies are industrial states, both systems are subject to the imperatives of industrialisation. This for both means planning."  [235•1  And since the plan expresses the essence of socialism, Galbraith believes that socialism is also inherent in developed capitalist countries. Bourgeois economists attempt to pass off the trend towards planning evolved by capitalist socialised production as socialism, that is, to pass off what are actually capitalist relations as socialist relations.

p In identifying capitalism and socialism Galbraith goes further than the theoreticians of the industrial society of the Aron type. Modern corporations, according to his theory, are managed by a scientific and technological elite, the “technostructure”, which strips the industrial system of its capitalist features and endows it with socialist features. This, he says, is expressed primarily in the disappearance of the main aims of production, which have guided capitalists for ages past.

p Thus, Aron’s “industrial society" pursues no special aims, while Galbraith’s does. For the capitalist and the capitalist system as a whole, Galbraith says, maximum profits were the main aim. The modern corporation, however, which is a managed “technostructure”, pursues different aims—it strives for the public weal, seeks to raise living standards and promote economic growth. The managers of corporations, Galbraith claims, are not interested in raising the dividends of the shareholders because they themselves are not shareholders. Modern corporations seek to achieve quite different aims from those which the individual capitalist of the 19th century, and even the corporations of the first decade of the 236 20th century, sought to attain. The “genius of the industrial system”, Galbraith says, advances aims reflecting his requirements: the effective production of the good things in life, the constant expansion of their output, the constant expansion of their consumption, preference of the good things to requirements, the unlimited striving for changes in technology, the autonomy of the technostructure, corresponding with the requirements of technological progress, the provision of skilled and educated labour power, which is coordinated with the virtues and enlightenment of people.

p This same “genius of the industrial system”, that is, the progress of the productive forces, removes the antithesis between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, since it abolishes exploitation and the rule of the capitalists, replacing it by the rule of the “technostructure”, which is devoid of capitalist properties. The class structure of capitalism disappears and society becomes a union of groups with nonantagonistic interests. Thus, in Galbraith’s opinion, modern capitalism acquires essentially socialist features.

From the point of view of the bourgeois economist Galbraith’s theory of the “industrial society" contains a certain internal harmony, since it strives to explain modern capitalism as a product of the scientific and technological revolution. Its picture of modern capitalism, however, is a distorted one. Declaring that the rule of capital, the monopolies and the finance oligarchy has been destroyed, it attempts to pass off monopoly and state-monopoly capitalism as a form of socialism.

p Another variant of the third trend in the bourgeois economic theory of socialism is that of the “convergence”, or “hybridisation” of socialism and capitalism. There are two sub-trends in this theory. The champions of the first strive to prove that a convergence of the two socio-economic systems will result from the economic policies of the socialist and capitalist countries, from the drawing together of the aims set by the bourgeois and socialist states. The champions of the other, the “technological” trend, deduce convergence from the scientific and technological revolution.

p The founder and most prominent spokesman of the first 237 variant of the convergence theory is Jan Tinbergen, the well-known Dutch economist. He is supported also by Thalheim, Linnemann, Pronk and others. They claim that convergence takes the road of linear programming and economic methods of planning, forecasting, tax policy and even inflation, which, they allege, lead to an “equalisation” of incomes and thus remove the antithesis between the poor and the rich in capitalist society. Tinbergen emphasises the importance of economic policy and the aims by which government is guided towards convergence.  [237•1  He says that socialist society develops in a capitalist direction through economic reforms, which, he holds, weaken centralised planning, develop the profit motive, strengthen the role of the market and lead to a growth in administrative personnel.

p Some authors assert that the convergence theory is not linked with the “industrial society" theory. However, ever since the latter emerged it has endeavoured to prove that a union, a synthesis and convergence of the two systems, is possible as a result of technological development in socialist and capitalist countries. Thus, as regards their theoretical basis, the “technological theory of convergence" is the logical continuation and development of the “industrial society" theory, which has been most clearly expressed in Galbraith’s recent work.

p The above brief description of Galbraith’s theory shows that he attempts to pass off capitalism as a variant of socialism. He himself claims that his theories are intended to replace the bankrupt theory of “democratic socialism”, the watchword of the Right Socialists. “The misfortune of democratic socialism has been the misfortune of the capitalist,"  [237•2  he writes. The Right Socialists preached the theory of the “growing of capitalism into socialism" through the merger of state-owned, nationalised property with private property, a union in which private property would play the decisive role. In the post-war years the reformist theory of socialism was reinforced by Keynes’s belief in the saving power of state intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. On this basis the Social Democrats declared that 238 capitalism had to some 50, or perhaps even 75, per cent already grown into socialism. In Galbraith’s opinion, the theory of “democratic socialism" is no longer viable and must be replaced by a theory according to which capitalism has been transformed by the technological revolution. All his arguments are aimed at proving that since the socialist countries are but a variant of the “industrial state”, they are related to the capitalist as regards economic structure. Since, he argues, modern progress leads to planning both in capitalist and in socialist countries, and technology and planning demand the union, convergence of the socialist and capitalist “industrial states"—“both systems are subject to the imperatives of industrialisation".  [238•1 

p The requirements of technology, the development of the productive forces are used by Galbraith to conceal the fundamental, qualitative differences between the relations of production in capitalist and in socialist society. He needs the myth about the existence in the USSR and the USA of a “technostructure”, which is supposed to exercise economic power, in order to underpin the convergence theory by an imagined similarity of the social structures in the USSR and in the USA. “The technostructure in the cases of both public and private ownership assumes similar powers and uses the same group methods for arriving at decisions. That it looks very much alike (in capitalist and in socialist society—I.D.) is not surprising."  [238•2  Galbraith believes that it is not necessary to fight the rule of the monopolies, the finance oligarchy, since the technological revolution and technological progress have, according to him, already destroyed their power.

p Thus, to make the socialist and the capitalist systems appear similar, Galbraith endeavours to deprive the relations in socialist society of their social definiteness and describes them simply as a function of technological progress. He is always bringing to the fore the techniques of management and control, which are closely linked with the present level of the productive forces in general.

p In the extension of the rights of socialist enterprises in the Soviet Union under the economic reform Galbraith sees 239 an important symptom of convergence. Naturally, he argues, the activities of socialist enterprises are determined by a state plan, but capitalist enterprises (corporations, which he regards as the ideal form of organisation) likewise have a planned programme of action. He thus presents the capitalist form of organisation, which is the result of the socialisation of production, as socialism, and endeavours to depict the extension of the rights of the Soviet enterprises as a form of development that is making them resemble capitalist corporations. He calls these processes “autonomy of the technostructure”, which he alleges is inherent both in capitalism and socialism. “The autonomy of the technostructure is, to repeat yet again, a functional necessity of the industrial system."  [239•1 

p The only true thing about all this is that the modern productive forces with their link-up between science and production, and the creation of giant power and industrial combines, require new forms of organisation and management, the use of computer techniques, a more sophisticated division of administrative work, and a certain independence of productive complexes. However, Galbraith ignores the interrelations between the enterprise and the state, between the owner of the means of production, and the factory, office and other workers, etc. Under capitalism, these relations are expressed in the appropriation by the monopolies of the surplus labour of the working class, while under socialism they are expressed in the rational distribution by the state of the surplus product in the interests of the entire nation. The fact that Soviet enterprises are given greater rights by the reform certainly does not mean that the relations between the director and the trade-union committee, between the management and the state come to resemble the relations between the monopolists, their managers and the state in the USA.

p Having discovered in the scientific and technological revolution a convenient basis for explaining the phenomena of modern monopoly and state-monopoly capitalism from bourgeois positions, Galbraith and his followers think they have succeeded in “proving” the identity of the two systems. They consider the fundamental differences an invention of 240 Marxists. They relate these differences to the sphere of politics and ideology and not to the economic sphere, which, in their opinion, is only a function of technology. “There is a broad convergence,” Galbraith writes, “between industrial systems. The imperatives of technology and organisation, not the images of ideology, are what determine the shape of economic society.” Or, as he says further on, “Ideology is not the relevant force."  [240•1  Galbraith considers that it is not monopoly capitalism that harbours the “ills of mankind”, but Marxism, which, he says, advanced the question of power with unprecedented force a hundred years ago. He is echoed by Allan G. Gruchy who also considers industrial technology “ideologically neutral" and regards the distinction between the economic systems only a matter of ideology and political institutions.  [240•2  Since technology is neutral, economics, he argues, should be reduced to technology, while the actual distinctions between socialism and capitalism should be declared a Marxist invention, or be relegated to the political sphere. Such are the methods of the “ technological theory of convergence”.

p Actually, however, neither the technological revolution nor state-monopoly capitalism, whose main laws are regarded in the “technological theories" as being derived from the technological revolution, are able to do away with the antithesis of the two socio-economic systems.

p No matter how extensively monopoly and state-monopoly capitalism resort to regulation of the economy and to state intervention in the reproduction process in modern conditions, they continue to be a system based on the exploitation of hired labour, on the appropriation of monopoly superprofits, on poverty for the broad mass of the people, and on the exploitation of backward countries. To transform statemonopoly capitalism into socialism there must be a socialist revolution, and the power of the monopolies must be eradicated. No theoretical conjuring is able to do this.

p The latest variant of the “technological” bourgeois theories of socialism is the theory of the “post-industrial society" elaborated by Boulding, Bell and Riesman. Its most recent 241 expression can be found in theory of the “technotronic society" by Brzezinski. This theory, as distinct from the “industrial society" theory, proceeds not from the first stage of the technological revolution, but from the all-round automation of production, that is, from the second stage of the scientific and technological revolution (which in its perfect form is incompatible with capitalism and demands the establishment of communism—the higher phase of social development).

p The new “technological” bourgeois theory of socialism strives to present the future of the capitalist countries as capitalist communism, as a society of leisure and universal abundance, ruled by a technocratic elite. This theory, as expounded by Brzezinski, tends to justify the United States’ claim to world leadership.

A distinctive feature of the theories of the “industrial society" and of “convergence” is their dual ideological role. Many supporters of these theories (Galbraith, for example) advocate peaceful coexistence, but at the same time the logic of the class struggle and the contradictions between the two systems have made these theories a weapon in imperialism’s struggle against socialism.