POWER STRATIFICATION IN THE SOVIET-TYPE SYSTEM: Socio-Economic Issues
Vadim Radaev
"In order to achieve their end collectivists must create power - power over men wielded by other men - of a magnitude never before known, and... their success will depend on the extent to which they achieve such power" (Hayek 1945: 107).
What is the basis of social stratification in the Soviet-type system? What kind of a role is played by power in the social structure? These issues make up the subject matter of the present article. As it is impossible to handle all the aspects of this immense problem, this paper will be confined to the socio-economic issues, and deal with political ones only in so far as it is unavoidable for the analysis.1 The classic example of the Soviet Union (or more precisely, the Russian Federation) is analysed, though the basic characteristics described are more or less relevant for all the societies of the Soviet type in the period before radical reform took place. With the exception of the last section of the paper, the system described is that which existed before 1985, in order to give us a clearer image of its essential features. The paper is mostly concerned with the general theoretical framework of power stratification. But in many respects (dealt with mainly in sections 4 and 5) it is a preliminary for empirical research as part of the project on `Power and Economic Relationships', currently being carried out in the Soviet Union.
1. Class versus stratum
The characterisation of the social structure of any society is more than just one of the fundamental problems in the social sciences. It is of practical importance, especially for the Soviet Union. The mainstreams of the Soviet social sciences, which have been seriously ideologised, have not so much analysed the reality as `created' the social structure at the order of the political authorities. Numerous studies of the social structure, some of which were really stimulating, were, nevertheless, strongly influenced by the dominant mythological model of `two friendly classes (workers and peasants)' together with a loosely defined stratum of `the people's intelligentsia' which includes officials ranging from the Prime minister to the lowest office clerk. There is no need to get down to a detailed description of all the controversies of the `2+1' model which falls far short of explaining the real pattern of social differentiation. This model has been widely criticised. To put these considerations into a broader framework, let me start with the following initial statement: the Soviet-type system is conceptually a society without classes.
The most wide-spread anti-class argument, stressing the absence of social groups of independent fully-fledged proprietors, is quite correct. But the decline of class is viewed in this paper not only from the starting point of differences in the possession of property, but within the much broader context of the existence of political, social and economic acquisition classes. The decline of all these forms of class resulted from the gradual destructuring of the Soviet-type societies. This process had three stages, namely the liquidation of the pre-revolutionary classes, the atomisation of society and growing social marginalisation.
The liquidation of the pre-revolutionary classes began immediately after the seizure of power with the expropriation of the landlords and capitalist employers, and then proceeded to incorporate most of the self-employed. The peasantry, being at that moment the vast majority of the population, were divorced from the land during the enforced collectivisation campaign and, therefore, lost the basis of their peasant status. The old highly trained intelligentsia, together with the small number of highly skilled industrial workers, lost their advanced positions, along with the conditions favourable for the maintenance of their professional and cultural values. The conflict with the pre-revolutionary classes was solved by means of violence including mass physical repression.
This process was followed by the gradual atomisation of the whole society. The abolition of private property and `etatisation' of all the basic public institutions destroyed the elements of civil society at the very early stages of its development. Moreover, the system of totalitarianism succeeded in the elimination of any socially significant and independent horizontal relationships between individual actors, as well as any voluntary non-state social, economic or political associations capable of protecting the interests of their members. Even the possibilities of articulating these individual interests were prevented. The individual actor was left completely helpless against the largely arbitrary power of the all-mighty party/state machinery. Except for the ruling strata, integrated by the nomenklatura organising principle, and other relatively uniform group interests, there was no basis for the consolidation of any other independent social forces. Basically speaking, the Soviet-type system is an amorphous society. The major part of the population can best be described as `the masses'.
The third point concerns the growing marginalisation of many social groups. The `marginals' here are understood to include not only the range of outsiders and outcasts living at the bottom of society. Marginality means the stable and socially conditioned discrepancy between the social, cultural backgrounds and the present position of the social actors (Starykov 1990). The people of peasant origin promoted to the top positions in the country; the first generations of `people's intelligentsia', ideologically educated professionals dependent on the bureaucracy and economically on a par with the manual workers; the landless `peasants' treated as civil workers; the masses of labourers with their preindustrial consciousness subjected to military-style industrial discipline; younger people starting their career and pensioners living below the poverty line - all of them represent various examples of large-scale marginality in the Soviet-type system. The basic reason for this is seen in the long-run party/state policy of enforced social mobility (both vertical and horizontal) which in fact was an active strategy of building up a socially homogeneous society.
The final argument in favour of the classless nature of the Soviet-type society comes from conflict theories defining a class as a large social group standing in opposition to some other social groups.2 Even the conflict theory supporters, however, while formally agreeing that the only way a class can be observed is in its conflict relationships, often fail to follow this theory consistently in the analysis of social action. Actually, apart from rare exceptions, since the early thirties in the Soviet Union very little actual social conflict has taken place. An amorphous society with poorly articulated social interest groups lacks conflict. So, a version of the socially homogeneous (classless) society had developed in reality long before it was proclaimed by the official authorities to be the achievement of `advanced socialism'.
2. Looking for the basic criterion
Moving on to the issue of social stratification one should specify the main ideas behind this approach. Social stratification is the relationship between the different social groups (strata) standing relative to each other in a hierarchy. In other words, it is a combination of a number of different dimensions of inequality among social actors in social groups. Stratification analysis is helpful in estimation and measurement, firstly, of the differences in actors' positions as members of passive strata or, secondly, of the differentiation in actors' social behaviour as members of active strata. The positions and behaviour of social actors also involve subjective ranking, though subjective evaluations vary and are difficult to observe.
If the existence of the social inequalities is assumed, does it mean that the only task of a researcher is to show objectively that society is divided into strata which have been decided on a priori? The answer is no. Moreover, no stratification research can pursue value and attitude neutrality or be completely objective. The choice of criteria and working methods is always, explicitly or implicitly, influenced by the researcher's personal views and preferences. But by and large, the analysis should possess a degree of explanatory power for the subjects of the research.
The next problem is that of the criteria which should be taken to make stratification analysis meaningful in the case of the Soviet-type system? Occupational lists are commonly used, and in the socio-economic sphere there is no better technical point with which to begin than the range of occupations. But pure occupational ranking is socially neutral and needs to be supplemented by other criteria. For instance, all scholars in the social sciences are sometimes grouped under the single heading of professionals, but this puts a junior research assistant, the head of department, the director of an institute and the party central committee adviser, in the same category, despite the fact that they represent four different social strata according to their social standing.
It has been mentioned already that the traditional Marxist criterion of social division on the basis of ownership has lost its meaning in the case of the Soviet-type system, at least in its orthodox version, under the conditions of universal party/state-owned property and the transformation of all workers into state-hired labourers. Soviet stratification studies carried out since the early 70s by Arutyunyan, Gordon, Klopov, Ryvkina, Shkaratan, Zaslavskaya and other scholars, were based mostly on the criteria of education and skills, work content and income differentiation. However, even in their most advanced attempts they experienced difficulties in explaining the sources and mechanisms of that social differentiation. The inevitable question is what is the real basis for the status of a social actor in the Soviet type society - educational level or personal wealth, occupational standing or some particular abilities? All of them are really important but play only a secondary role. The initial hypothesis considered in the present paper is the following: it is the distribution of power that constitutes the basic criterion of social stratification in the Soviet-type system.
The position of a social actor in a power hierarchy defines, to a considerable extent, the working conditions and access to information, the opportunities to control state-owned property and the level of material well-being. Power allows access to all social rewards. So, power structure forms the pivot of the stratification system in the Soviet-type society as a whole.3
3. Power as domination
As soon as power is recognised to be the core of social relationships in the Soviet-type system, a more detailed interpretation of power itself is needed. Initially power is considered here as the capacity of a social actor, whether individual or collective, to promote their own interests irrespective of the interests of the other social actors. Power means one's capacity to impose one's will, regardless of whether this activity is supported or rejected.4
Generally speaking, the distribution of power forms the basis of any society. But the specific forms of control and authority vary greatly among different social systems. In modern western societies the power of social actors is mediated by the basic institutions of private property and rule of formal law. In the Soviet-type society, on the contrary, highly concentrated political and economic power has no substantial institutional limitations. It has been institutionalised as `bare' power and direct control over social resources. As a result, no `pure' economic laws can be observed in this system, in which property has been suppressed by power. No branch minister or factory manager make their decisions as actors driven only by distinct economic incentives.5
Some writers deny that the ruling strata have power, because they cannot run the society efficiently. But essentially, power is distinct from management. The latter means a capacity to achieve efficient outcomes through the coordination of various interests. The former includes also a right to allocate and spend resources or simply to put a stop on activities regardless of economic efficiency. In the Soviet-type system the use of power is basically inefficient in economic terms, and pursues non-economic goals. For instance, if in spite of all current debates in the Soviet Union, the costly new oil-refinery complexes in Siberia are constructed, it will not be an example of economic management but of the exercise of authority. Power (first of all political) intervenes and subordinates the basic structure of economic relationships.
A Soviet-type society is organised along the lines of a number of power hierarchies. Power relationships are established in the domination of higher layers over lower ones. Control is established not only by means of force and violence, but through a peculiar type of authority, which is distinct from the Weberian legal, traditional and charismatic types. Following the Weberian tradition, Bauman defines this as a fourth ideal type of authority, namely `partynomial'. It is characterised by futuristic legitimation, by loyalty to the party as the ruler building the ideal society, and by teleological determination of the macro-social processes (Bauman 1974: 134-140). It is noticeable also that this type of authority has no full legal basis. It is rule outside formal law.
`Partynomial' authority has excluded the existence of power in the form of autonomy, that is relative independence in decision-making concerning one's own activities. All social actors become involved in gigantic collectivist projects. Conflicts of interests among groups and individuals have been resolved by the creation of the system of fear. But very often social actors, being objects of ideological manipulation, perceive these interests as their own, even if they lose from the interaction.
From the standpoint of economics, which is most important for this paper, a range of structural elements can be defined to specify the content of power relations, namely:
- - the monopoly in the allocation of resources and finished products
- - the control of access to information utilised as a kind of resource
- - the opportunities to veto other kinds of activities and to authorise economic rules
- - the possession of personal influence over people and events.
It is the monopoly in resource distribution that is the crucial point in the establishment of power. Possessing the right to control and reallocate the financial, material, labour and information resources, a social actor is capable, as a rule, of making other people his subordinates.
The party/state political control imposed on the Soviet-type society has opened the way for the expropriation and redistribution of huge resources for production. Direct producers deprived of ownership of the means of production, divorced from real consumer demand and sources of valid information, have become the objects of administrative manipulation. The latter is provided through the channels of informal departmental decision-making in the form of mandatory planning, and various instructions and directives. The economic rules for any producer are strictly determined, including both the rates at which their incomes are expropriated through fixed prices and taxation systems, and the ways in which they are allowed to use what is left over.
Of course, the power of party/state authoritative bodies is by no means absolute domination. It allows space for bargaining and for the lower layers to simply cheat their authorities (This problem will be considered in section 6). The higher party/state authorities can easily and quite consciously miss a lot of variation in the producers' behaviour. But they maintain their unquestionable right to interfere at any moment and put a stop to any kind of activities they recognise as inappropriate.
4. Ranking and privilege
Power provides an intrinsic reward for an individual, in feelings of satisfaction. But what is much more important, the implementation of power brings to its possessor the whole variety of extrinsic rewards. It gives access to the sources of material benefits and elite education, to the most favourable working conditions, and to higher social prestige.
1. From ranking to power
In the system of non-market power relationships the different aspects of the social status of an individual cannot be measured basically in monetary terms. A party functionary influences economic activities without being an owner of the means of production, at least in the full sense, and without being even an economic actor in legal terms. His consumer's power is only partly defined by the level of his months' salary as well. The main flows of socio-economic rewards come here from a completely different source, namely, from the system of privileges. Privilege is the exclusive right of a social actor, legitimated by law or customs, to obtain rewards (goods and services) to which access is limited. The widespread, but not very reasonable notion still prevails that privileges are the attributes of top officials only. This notion has been taken up in the slogans of the populist anti-bureaucratic social movement in the Soviet Union, but basically speaking, privilege is the main type of reward distribution in the Soviet-type system of power relationships, involving the vast majority of the population.