Empires in Decline

An Interview with Paul Sweezy

Paul Sweezy is the long-time editor of Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine published out of New York He is the co-author of the ground-breaking Monopoly Capital, and author or co-author of more than a dozen other books. A former assistant professor at Harvard University, he has held visiting professorships at Cornell, Stanford, Yale, the University of California, the New School for Social Research, Manchester University and many other schools.

The United States almost deliberately imposed the Cold War with an intention of forcing the Soviet Union into an inescapable bind... Multinational Monitor: Why did the Soviet system fall apart so suddenly after the coup?
Paul Sweezy: I think that it didn't really fall apart at this time. The basic changes came before this particular crisis. The coup, obviously an amateurish, bungled job, accelerated matters somewhat. It cleared away certain obstacles to a process--the disintegration of the old command, centralized system of the economy--which was already underway.
On the other hand, I don't think that very much has really changed. I don't see that Gorbachev lost anything--I think he gained power, as a matter of fact, insofar as he or Yeltsin or anyone else as an individual can have any power.
These processes are very elemental processes and one need not be--or should not be--surprised when episodes like the attempted coup or crises of that kind occur. I'm sure that they will. I think the process has been underway for two years now, is continuing and will continue.
I don't know where they are going, but Marxist analysis ought to have some kind of framework within which to put historical events of this kind. Marxists should be thinking in terms of classes and class struggles and they are not.
MM: What are the underlying structural causes of the disintegration of the command economy?
Sweezy: The Soviet economy had gone into a stagnation during the Brezhnev era. The outward manifestation of this was, of course, a slow-down in the rate of growth which was apparently, from what we know now, much steeper than what official statistics showed at the time.
The centrally planned system was enormously effective early on, after the revolution, in solving the problem of making the Soviet Union a formidable military power. It never had succeeded in solving any of the problems of the peacetime economy, nor did it really try to, because the Cold War forced the Soviet Union to continue as a military-dominated dictatorship even after World War II. If, at the end of World War II, when the regime was popular and success had been achieved,it had been feasible to transform their economy into a peacetime economy and to loosen up the dictatorial regime, I think there would have been a chance for the Soviet Union to develop into something quite different.
[Instead], the Cold War ensued. The United States almost deliberately, as a matter of policy, imposed the Cold War with an intention of forcing the Soviet Union into an inescapable bind from which it could never really transform itself into an attractive socialist economy. Having missed that potentiality, the system from then on deteriorated. It did have the recuperative power to reconstruct the society. But after that it began to wind down. Out of necessity it used its resources, its best resources, its best man- and woman-power for military purposes. This began to take its toll, and I think that is at the origin of the stagnation of the 1970s and 1980s....
I edited a book called Post-Revolutionary Societies which was published in 1981, four years before Gorbachev came to power. In it, I spoke of the stagnation of the Soviet economy in parallel to the stagnation of the capitalist world economy, with both of them having similar manifestations in the slow-down of growth of the economy but no way out of the crisis.
Gorbachev recognized that something had to be done. I don't know if there was any way other than what he did--he had to open it up. For that, he gets credit, whatever happens. He opened up. He accepted the implications of the Cold War: that the Soviet Union had lost it; that they had to let the Eastern European countries go their own way. All that was implicit in the collapse of the system which had fought World War II, won World War II, succeeded in reconstructing the economy but never in making a transition to a system which would operate in peacetime, [in part because it] never had peacetime.
MM: What would be the main elements of a Marxist analysis of the current situation in the Soviet Union?
Sweezy: From a Marxist point of view, every society has to be first conceived and understood as a class society--that is every society that history has dealt with for the last 15,000 years, since the agricultural revolution. They are all class societies. If you want to understand them from a Marxist point of view, you have got to [identify] the class structure, the subordinate and dominant classes, the modes of extracting surpluses. Nobody seems to be applying that framework to the Soviet Union today, and there are reasons for it. The class structure of the Soviet Union is extremely fluid and undefined, very difficult to deal with. I don't know of any good work, theoretical or empirical on this subject.
The capitalist class, which they want to get, doesn't exist in the Soviet Union. The working class does exist--it is perhaps the most clearly formed class in the Soviet Union--and consists of those who would not be able to survive if they did not have their wages or unemployment insurance. That class is what Marx calls a class in itself, as it exists. It is statistically measurable; the working class is probably 75 to 80 percent of the Soviet population. But it has a history which has prevented it from developing its own ideas, from recognizing its interests. It is a class in itself, but it is as far as you can get from a class for itself, by which Marx meant a class which is conscious of its existence as a class, knows its interests, has some kind of leadership and organizations to carry through.
The best example in the developed capitalist world of a class for itself is the monopoly capitalist class of the United States, Japan and Germany. They are enormously powerful, very well aware of their interests and have the political means to carry out their project. Nothing like that exists in the Soviet Union.
[Soviet leaders] want to create a capitalist system, but they do not have a capitalist class to help them. People like Gorbachev and Yeltsin and these individuals who are thrown up by historical turbulence are in no condition, really, to provide the framework within which a capitalist project can be carried forward. You have to remember that the development of a capitalist class in the West took at least a couple of centuries. In the Soviet Union, what they want to do is get the mode of production [now] and [develop] the class later, or at the same time. It is a historical problem without any precedent.
MM: To what extent can foreign capital and foreign investment fill that role or stimulate others to fill it?
Sweezy: I don't think it can fill the role at all. Or, let's put it this way: to the extent that it fills the role, it will lead to what I think can best be described as a Latin Americanization of the Soviet Union. In other words, it will make it into a colonial area. I think the Soviet Union is too big and unwieldy; I doubt that can be done.
Certainly the idea that foreigners are going to go into an area as big and complex as the Soviet Union and do the job is an illusion. They could conceivably set up what would in effect be colonies or plantations, perhaps, which would be sources of wealth for some segments of the Western capitalist economies, but it wouldn't have anything to do with creating a capitalist society in the Soviet Union or Russia.
MM: Do you have any predictions about where the Soviet economy may be headed?
Sweezy: I think it depends very much on whether the working class in the Soviet Union and particularly in Russia and the Ukraine develops in the direction of self-organization and becoming conscious of its interests as a class, its potential power, its interests, and so on. To what extent that may happen at the present time, I really don't know. I have seen some reports which indicate that there are at least some areas--the coal miners, the auto workers, maybe the transport workers-- where there is some movement.
Looking at the history of capitalism [in the West], the emergence of a working class and its development of its own institutions, its own ideology took a long time--pretty much the whole nineteenth century. It was much more reformist than revolutionary in terms of what Marx expected, but, at any rate, by the end of the nineteenth century, by the First World War, you had an international working class movement with its own institutions and well-developed ideas. But look how long it took. Can we expect anything to go very much more quickly in the Soviet Union?
I would say one thing we should have learned more than anything else is the general rule that everything goes slowly in history. It may go faster than it did earlier in history, but even fast history is pretty slow by the timetable of an individual's life. Usually, you have to think in terms of generations and not in terms of years or decades. So I think the processes are going to be long and drawn-out, and many surprises can come up.
MM: How eager is the Soviet populace for a market economy to be imported?
Sweezy: It looks to me from what I have read that they are not very eager at all. They do not seem to have much enthusiasm for a market economy, though it might be good for them. Some kind of order probably is necessary and I think markets--without actually involving a full-fledged restoration of capitalism, maybe something along the lines of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s--[might be beneficial].
MM: To what extent does Communist ideology still have adherents among the general population?
Sweezy: Communist ideology [in the Soviet Union] had become a rigidified set of doctrines which was more ideological than scientific; [it] had become an instrument of rule rather than [a tool of] serious analysis. Under Stalin, it became rigid, and from then it degenerated even by Stalin's standards. He at least had some interesting theories and thoughts about things like markets and nationalism which were not simply ideological constructs. But by the time of Brezhnev, communist ideology had been totally distorted from any of its roots in Marxism. And the way it was taught in the schools was apparently totally boring and stupid. [So young people] naturally have no idea what Marxism is all about. I would expect that now the possibility may exist for Soviets to begin to study Marx and Lenin and Trotsky and some other theorists who were very creative thinkers.
We have the same problem here of course. Our theories of democracy are rigidified and stultified.
MM: What elements from the old Soviet system are worth salvaging, either for the Soviet Union or for other societies?
Sweezy: I think the elements which are worth salvaging are perfectly clear: the social security system, the health care system, the educational system. Those were the only things that kept the old system going as long as it did. After all, people did have a certain sense of security. That is what they are losing all over Eastern Europe now. Not as much would have been done in the social security systems in Western Europe if the Soviet Union did not in a sense provide an example with which they competed. Though the Swedish and the German and the English examples go back long before the [Russian] revolution, I don't think they would have been as thorough as they were but for the Soviet example. Those things are not only salvageable, but they are essentially here to stay.
MM: How is the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union going to affect Cuba?
Sweezy: I really do not know.... I think the United States is behaving very foolishly and stupidly toward Cuba. They obviously would like to restore the old order in Cuba, but I don't think that the Cubans will have any enthusiasm for that. To be restored at all, it would have to be in a bloody dictatorial form. If, at the present time, the United States would say, "Alright, let's trade with Cuba and treat them like another country," that would be a real challenge for Fidel--I don't know what he would do then. It might be the best way for the United States to win the battle of Cuba. On the other hand, I don't think our ruling class would ever have the sense to do that.
MM: What are going to be the main effects of the end of the Cold War on the U.S. economy?
Sweezy: The collapse of the Cold War is a genuine watershed in the post-World War II development of capitalism and in particular for the United States. The U.S. economy has been sustained--with whatever qualifications you want to make--by the Cold War for 40 years. That hasn't been suddenly eradicated, but it will never be the same. I don't think there is ever going to be a plausible enemy like the Soviet Union which can make this country easily and willingly swallow wasting 5 or 10 percent of the gross national product on military expenditures. [Yet this] has been the sustaining element for the relatively prosperous development of capitalism.
So we are in a period of chronic crisis, I believe. Capitalism, at heart, is a system of capital accumulation, and the capital accumulation process is in a shambles. There is nothing like the historic role of private capital accumulation to underpin the whole economy. And without that and without the Cold War, I don't see any plausible alternative, with the possible exception of a very highly developed welfare state society--but that is politically far out of reach now. Otherwise, I cannot see what is going to make the system work in any reasonably satisfactory way in terms of secure, reasonably [harmonious] interclass relations. I think that is all down the drain with the Cold War, and I don't think the people who think seriously about these questions have begun to grasp what is going on. There has been a drastic, basic change in the global conditions under which capitalism developed.
Again, you need to use a class analysis to understand our capitalist class, the most powerful class the world has ever seen, but one which has no thoughts, no way of understanding itself. It knows what its immediate interests are but not its long-term interests.
MM: Many business groups have suggested that free trade is a means to spark worldwide growth.
Sweezy: I think free trade on a global scale is in retreat, very definitely. The global capitalist economy is being regrouped into three empires or spheres of influence--the United States in the Western hemisphere, Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia--and these are more and more be coming blocs. They may have freer trade within the blocs, but if you average the trade freedom on a global scale, I think you'll see it is going downhill, not uphill.
[In any case], you can't be serious to think that free trade is going to solve the problem of a shortage of private capital accumulation. [Trade] is too small.
MM: How do you expect relations between the United States, Japan and Europe to evolve?
Sweezy: It will take some time before we can see that very clearly. I think the U.S. relative economic decline will probably be speeded up. To what extent this can be compensated by military domination remains to be seen.
I think it is going to depend to a considerable extent on what happens internally. If the U.S. population does not react in some way to militarization and world domination, it can probably go on for quite a long time with terrible disasters. The Gulf War is just the beginning of what could happen.
I put whatever hopes I have at the present time on a kind of reanimation of domestic opposition to the whole shebang--the whole range of international and domestic policies. But I have to say that I don't see many signs of that reanimation. Still, one who lived through the 1930s--as I did--is always looking for signs of an uprising from below such as took place in the thirties and wondering why it doesn't happen.

Gorbachev recognized that something had to be done. I don't know if there was any way other than what he did - he had to open it up. For that, he gets credit, whatever happens... He accespted the implications of the Cold War: that the Soviet Union had lost it; that they had to let the Eastern European countries go.

Soviet leaders want to create a capitalist system, but they do not have a capitalist class to help them... It is a historical problem without precedent.

One who lived through the 1930s - as I did - is always looking for signs of an uprising from below such as took place in the thirties and wondering why it doesn't happen.

Table of Contents

The United States almost deliberately imposed the Cold War with an intention of forcing the Soviet Union into an inescapable bind...	Multinational Monitor: Why did the Soviet system fall apart so suddenly after the coup? Paul Sweezy: I think that it didn't really fall apart at this time. The basic changes came before this particular crisis. The coup, obviously an amateurish, bungled job, accelerated matters somewhat. It cleared away certain obstacles to a process--the disintegration of the old command, centralized system of the economy--which was already underway. On the other hand, I don't think that very much has really changed. I don't see that Gorbachev lost anything--I think he gained power, as a matter of fact, insofar as he or Yeltsin or anyone else as an individual can have any power. These processes are very elemental processes and one need not be--or should not be--surprised when episodes like the attempted coup or crises of that kind occur. I'm sure that they will. I think the process has been underway for two years now, is continuing and will continue. I don't know where they are going, but Marxist analysis ought to have some kind of framework within which to put historical events of this kind. Marxists should be thinking in terms of classes and class struggles and they are not. MM: What are the underlying structural causes of the disintegration of the command economy? Sweezy: The Soviet economy had gone into a stagnation during the Brezhnev era. The outward manifestation of this was, of course, a slow-down in the rate of growth which was apparently, from what we know now, much steeper than what official statistics showed at the time. The centrally planned system was enormously effective early on, after the revolution, in solving the problem of making the Soviet Union a formidable military power. It never had succeeded in solving any of the problems of the peacetime economy, nor did it really try to, because the Cold War forced the Soviet Union to continue as a military-dominated dictatorship even after World War II. If, at the end of World War II, when the regime was popular and success had been achieved,it had been feasible to transform their economy into a peacetime economy and to loosen up the dictatorial regime, I think there would have been a chance for the Soviet Union to develop into something quite different. [Instead], the Cold War ensued. The United States almost deliberately, as a matter of policy, imposed the Cold War with an intention of forcing the Soviet Union into an inescapable bind from which it could never really transform itself into an attractive socialist economy. Having missed that potentiality, the system from then on deteriorated. It did have the recuperative power to reconstruct the society. But after that it began to wind down. Out of necessity it used its resources, its best resources, its best man- and woman-power for military purposes. This began to take its toll, and I think that is at the origin of the stagnation of the 1970s and 1980s.... I edited a book called Post-Revolutionary Societies which was published in 1981, four years before Gorbachev came to power. In it, I spoke of the stagnation of the Soviet economy in parallel to the stagnation of the capitalist world economy, with both of them having similar manifestations in the slow-down of growth of the economy but no way out of the crisis. Gorbachev recognized that something had to be done. I don't know if there was any way other than what he did--he had to open it up. For that, he gets credit, whatever happens. He opened up. He accepted the implications of the Cold War: that the Soviet Union had lost it; that they had to let the Eastern European countries go their own way. All that was implicit in the collapse of the system which had fought World War II, won World War II, succeeded in reconstructing the economy but never in making a transition to a system which would operate in peacetime, [in part because it] never had peacetime. MM: What would be the main elements of a Marxist analysis of the current situation in the Soviet Union? Sweezy: From a Marxist point of view, every society has to be first conceived and understood as a class society--that is every society that history has dealt with for the last 15,000 years, since the agricultural revolution. They are all class societies. If you want to understand them from a Marxist point of view, you have got to [identify] the class structure, the subordinate and dominant classes, the modes of extracting surpluses. Nobody seems to be applying that framework to the Soviet Union today, and there are reasons for it. The class structure of the Soviet Union is extremely fluid and undefined, very difficult to deal with. I don't know of any good work, theoretical or empirical on this subject. The capitalist class, which they want to get, doesn't exist in the Soviet Union. The working class does exist--it is perhaps the most clearly formed class in the Soviet Union--and consists of those who would not be able to survive if they did not have their wages or unemployment insurance. That class is what Marx calls a class in itself, as it exists. It is statistically measurable; the working class is probably 75 to 80 percent of the Soviet population. But it has a history which has prevented it from developing its own ideas, from recognizing its interests. It is a class in itself, but it is as far as you can get from a class for itself, by which Marx meant a class which is conscious of its existence as a class, knows its interests, has some kind of leadership and organizations to carry through. The best example in the developed capitalist world of a class for itself is the monopoly capitalist class of the United States, Japan and Germany. They are enormously powerful, very well aware of their interests and have the political means to carry out their project. Nothing like that exists in the Soviet Union. [Soviet leaders] want to create a capitalist system, but they do not have a capitalist class to help them. People like Gorbachev and Yeltsin and these individuals who are thrown up by historical turbulence are in no condition, really, to provide the framework within which a capitalist project can be carried forward. You have to remember that the development of a capitalist class in the West took at least a couple of centuries. In the Soviet Union, what they want to do is get the mode of production [now] and [develop] the class later, or at the same time. It is a historical problem without any precedent. MM: To what extent can foreign capital and foreign investment fill that role or stimulate others to fill it? Sweezy: I don't think it can fill the role at all. Or, let's put it this way: to the extent that it fills the role, it will lead to what I think can best be described as a Latin Americanization of the Soviet Union. In other words, it will make it into a colonial area. I think the Soviet Union is too big and unwieldy; I doubt that can be done. Certainly the idea that foreigners are going to go into an area as big and complex as the Soviet Union and do the job is an illusion. They could conceivably set up what would in effect be colonies or plantations, perhaps, which would be sources of wealth for some segments of the Western capitalist economies, but it wouldn't have anything to do with creating a capitalist society in the Soviet Union or Russia. MM: Do you have any predictions about where the Soviet economy may be headed? Sweezy: I think it depends very much on whether the working class in the Soviet Union and particularly in Russia and the Ukraine develops in the direction of self-organization and becoming conscious of its interests as a class, its potential power, its interests, and so on. To what extent that may happen at the present time, I really don't know. I have seen some reports which indicate that there are at least some areas--the coal miners, the auto workers, maybe the transport workers-- where there is some movement. Looking at the history of capitalism [in the West], the emergence of a working class and its development of its own institutions, its own ideology took a long time--pretty much the whole nineteenth century. It was much more reformist than revolutionary in terms of what Marx expected, but, at any rate, by the end of the nineteenth century, by the First World War, you had an international working class movement with its own institutions and well-developed ideas. But look how long it took. Can we expect anything to go very much more quickly in the Soviet Union? I would say one thing we should have learned more than anything else is the general rule that everything goes slowly in history. It may go faster than it did earlier in history, but even fast history is pretty slow by the timetable of an individual's life. Usually, you have to think in terms of generations and not in terms of years or decades. So I think the processes are going to be long and drawn-out, and many surprises can come up. MM: How eager is the Soviet populace for a market economy to be imported? Sweezy: It looks to me from what I have read that they are not very eager at all. They do not seem to have much enthusiasm for a market economy, though it might be good for them. Some kind of order probably is necessary and I think markets--without actually involving a full-fledged restoration of capitalism, maybe something along the lines of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s--[might be beneficial]. MM: To what extent does Communist ideology still have adherents among the general population? Sweezy: Communist ideology [in the Soviet Union] had become a rigidified set of doctrines which was more ideological than scientific; [it] had become an instrument of rule rather than [a tool of] serious analysis. Under Stalin, it became rigid, and from then it degenerated even by Stalin's standards. He at least had some interesting theories and thoughts about things like markets and nationalism which were not simply ideological constructs. But by the time of Brezhnev, communist ideology had been totally distorted from any of its roots in Marxism. And the way it was taught in the schools was apparently totally boring and stupid. [So young people] naturally have no idea what Marxism is all about. I would expect that now the possibility may exist for Soviets to begin to study Marx and Lenin and Trotsky and some other theorists who were very creative thinkers. We have the same problem here of course. Our theories of democracy are rigidified and stultified. MM: What elements from the old Soviet system are worth salvaging, either for the Soviet Union or for other societies? Sweezy: I think the elements which are worth salvaging are perfectly clear: the social security system, the health care system, the educational system. Those were the only things that kept the old system going as long as it did. After all, people did have a certain sense of security. That is what they are losing all over Eastern Europe now. Not as much would have been done in the social security systems in Western Europe if the Soviet Union did not in a sense provide an example with which they competed. Though the Swedish and the German and the English examples go back long before the [Russian] revolution, I don't think they would have been as thorough as they were but for the Soviet example. Those things are not only salvageable, but they are essentially here to stay. MM: How is the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union going to affect Cuba? Sweezy: I really do not know.... I think the United States is behaving very foolishly and stupidly toward Cuba. They obviously would like to restore the old order in Cuba, but I don't think that the Cubans will have any enthusiasm for that. To be restored at all, it would have to be in a bloody dictatorial form. If, at the present time, the United States would say, "Alright, let's trade with Cuba and treat them like another country," that would be a real challenge for Fidel--I don't know what he would do then. It might be the best way for the United States to win the battle of Cuba. On the other hand, I don't think our ruling class would ever have the sense to do that. MM: What are going to be the main effects of the end of the Cold War on the U.S. economy? Sweezy: The collapse of the Cold War is a genuine watershed in the post-World War II development of capitalism and in particular for the United States. The U.S. economy has been sustained--with whatever qualifications you want to make--by the Cold War for 40 years. That hasn't been suddenly eradicated, but it will never be the same. I don't think there is ever going to be a plausible enemy like the Soviet Union which can make this country easily and willingly swallow wasting 5 or 10 percent of the gross national product on military expenditures. [Yet this] has been the sustaining element for the relatively prosperous development of capitalism. So we are in a period of chronic crisis, I believe. Capitalism, at heart, is a system of capital accumulation, and the capital accumulation process is in a shambles. There is nothing like the historic role of private capital accumulation to underpin the whole economy. And without that and without the Cold War, I don't see any plausible alternative, with the possible exception of a very highly developed welfare state society--but that is politically far out of reach now. Otherwise, I cannot see what is going to make the system work in any reasonably satisfactory way in terms of secure, reasonably [harmonious] interclass relations. I think that is all down the drain with the Cold War, and I don't think the people who think seriously about these questions have begun to grasp what is going on. There has been a drastic, basic change in the global conditions under which capitalism developed. Again, you need to use a class analysis to understand our capitalist class, the most powerful class the world has ever seen, but one which has no thoughts, no way of understanding itself. It knows what its immediate interests are but not its long-term interests. MM: Many business groups have suggested that free trade is a means to spark worldwide growth. Sweezy: I think free trade on a global scale is in retreat, very definitely. The global capitalist economy is being regrouped into three empires or spheres of influence--the United States in the Western hemisphere, Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia--and these are more and more be coming blocs. They may have freer trade within the blocs, but if you average the trade freedom on a global scale, I think you'll see it is going downhill, not uphill. [In any case], you can't be serious to think that free trade is going to solve the problem of a shortage of private capital accumulation. [Trade] is too small. MM: How do you expect relations between the United States, Japan and Europe to evolve? Sweezy: It will take some time before we can see that very clearly. I think the U.S. relative economic decline will probably be speeded up. To what extent this can be compensated by military domination remains to be seen. I think it is going to depend to a considerable extent on what happens internally. If the U.S. population does not react in some way to militarization and world domination, it can probably go on for quite a long time with terrible disasters. The Gulf War is just the beginning of what could happen. I put whatever hopes I have at the present time on a kind of reanimation of domestic opposition to the whole shebang--the whole range of international and domestic policies. But I have to say that I don't see many signs of that reanimation. Still, one who lived through the 1930s--as I did--is always looking for signs of an uprising from below such as took place in the thirties and wondering why it doesn't happen.
Gorbachev recognized that something had to be done. I don't know if there was any way other than what he did - he had to open it up. For that, he gets credit, whatever happens... He accespted the implications of the Cold War: that the Soviet Union had lost it; that they had to let the Eastern European countries go.
Soviet leaders want to create a capitalist system, but they do not have a capitalist class to help them... It is a historical problem without precedent.
One who lived through the 1930s - as I did - is always looking for signs of an uprising from below such as took place in the thirties and wondering why it doesn't happen.