Most likely none of our readers will be surprised to find out that the contemporary Russian society is not a fair society. In our country, this has already become obvious to everyone.
The contemporary Russian society cannot provide equality and prosperity for all its citizens. Here in Russia, some people are allowed everything, while others are allowed nothing. Some people are rich, while others scramble for food.
Why are things the way they are? Because our Russian society is a class society. There are different population groups in our country – they are called classes and they have different judicial and material opportunities for making a living.
Russian bourgeois scientists, parroting Western sociologists, divide the modern society into upper class, middle class and lower class. The main criteria for them is normally the income of a person, i.e. the summarized amount of money which a person earns within a particular time period (a month or a year) in the form of a salary, or dividends from their shares on the stock market, or from other sources. This income varies greatly from class to class, by dozens, hundreds and even thousands of times! Bourgeois sociologists explain this colossal difference by saying that the members of the propertied classes (the upper class and the middle class) know how to work and enjoy working, while the members of the lower social class, poor people, are allegedly lazy and inactive, that’s why their living conditions are so bad.
One could believe in this (and some actually do!), if not for the statistical data, according to which the upper and middle class in all of the capitalist countries amount to a miniscule portion of a country’s population.
The richest people, i.e. those who represent the upper class, amount to no more than 0,5-1% of the total population of the world.
Taking into account the fact that the monthly salary of a member of the middle class begins with 3500 dollars a month (this is the criterium of the World Bank), no more than 8% of the Earth’s population may be classified as the middle class.
This figure varies widely from country to country. In European countries and the USA this class amounts to 15-18%, in developing countries – to less than 7%. Bourgeois sociologists make every effort to shift the lower limit of the middle class, trying to include in it as many people from the lower class, whose income exceeds the average in their group, as possible.
As for Russia, according to the 2008 estimate of the Institute of the Contemporary Development, only 7% of Russians [1] could be classified as the typical middle class meeting all the necessary international criteria at the same time; moreover, this figure drops every year and is mostly represented by officials. Which is not at all consistent with all the joyous claims the Russian government has been feeding us.
In any case, it seems that the members of the lower class amount to about 90% of the world population. In the richest countries of Europe alone, which have lived off less developed countries for centuries, the lower class amounts to 75-80% of the population.
Now, if we were to believe bourgeois sociologists, it turns out that, on average, 9 out of 10 people don’t want to work and only 1 out of 10 is hard-working and energetic. Could it really be the case, if we look at the world around us?
Of course not! On the contrary, all around we can see plenty of people who work hard, relentlessly, often 12 hours a day without weekends and work this way for months and even years, yet they can’t climb out of persistent poverty and provide a decent living for their families. We also see people who have not made anything useful in their entire life, who clearly parasitize off of others and do nothing, but at the same time enjoy all the benefits they could possibly wish for. However, the number of such people is absolutely miniscule.
Who are they? They are oligarchs and businessmen showing up at their enterprises once a year, only to pick up the profit they are entitled to; high rank officials and deputies who never really worry too much about the common folk; priests at different stages of obesity; the family members of all those mentioned above and their minions. And that’s it!
Why is it so? Why some people work, but don’t have anything, and others don’t work and have everything?
Why, because our society is in fact a class society, only the definition of “class”, proposed by the bourgeois sociologists, i.e. the degree of prosperity of a person, their summarized financial income, is completely wrong. It’s not scientific, because it can neither explain the reality around us, nor predict the future outcome, while every truly scientific theory by definition must be able to do that.
The only truly scientific definition of social class comes from the class’s place in the production process, determined by its relation to the means of production. I.e., to put it simply, the owner of a plant is the one who profiteers off of it and lives in prosperity.
If the plant belongs to a capitalist and not to the workers, the latter will always live in poverty, while the capitalist does not have to work at all – the profits will be flowing in anyway.
And if plants and factories belong to workers, then the workers will have a good life, because all the products from these plants and factories will belong to them and they will not need any capitalists.
The production cannot exist without working hands, but it can easily make do without the capitalist masters and even develop better – this was proved by the Soviet experience. At a certain stage of the development of capitalism, at its highest stage, the capitalist becomes a redundant link of the economy – it works just fine without them. The economy doesn’t need the capitalist anymore, the capitalist, however, needs it in order to pocket all the surplus.
Therefore, our contemporary Russian society can be considered divided into two main classes – the bourgeoisie (the owners of the means of production) and the proletarians (employees working for capitalists and creating profits for them with their labour).
In our country the bourgeoisie amounts to no more than 3% of the population, the rest are the hired workers and the disabled.
In contemporary Russia the power belongs to the class of the bourgeoisie, so the economy in our country functions in a way which is most profitable for this class. For the bourgeoisie, it is important to get as much profit as possible, not to make everyone in our country live a free and happy life. That’s why the laws in our country are only beneficial for the bourgeoisie and our government does only what the bourgeoisie requires. To expect that the Russian government will take care of the poor is futile – for it was originally created to protect the class interests of capitalists and their upper layer, the oligarchs.
Because the Russian society is a bourgeois society, a capitalist society, it operates according to the laws that capitalism subjects to.
The main peculiarity of a capitalist society is that it is full of contradictions. In such society, in order to survive, a person must always struggle. That’s because the interests of the two social classes in this kind of society are opposite to each other. The bourgeoisie is better off if it pays as little money as possible to hired workers for their labour and exploits them as much as possible, in order to extract as much profit as possible. Whilst hired workers, on the contrary, seek higher wages, so that they would not only allow them to put the food on the table and buy the necessary minimum of clothes, but also provide a roof over their heads, the opportunity to support their families and bring up kids, give them an education, etc. This contradiction of the capitalist society is irreconcilable (antagonistic, mutually exclusive), fundamental, which cannot be destroyed or overcome with any reforms within the boundaries of a bourgeois system, because the entire capitalist production rests on it, the entire economy of this society.
Class struggle between the interests of the bourgeoisie and the interests of hired workers (proletarians) is ongoing and will always go on as long as capitalism exists. And on the course of this struggle, on the temporary successes or failures of this or that class, depend the living conditions of hired workers in the capitalist society.
When the proletariat wins, it extracts certain concessions from the ruling class, improving its material status this way. Bourgeois governments have to provide certain social guarantees for hired workers, raise their salaries, offer unemployment benefits and so on. But if the proletariat stops pressuring the bourgeoisie, the latter immediately starts advancing against the proletariat, taking away all of its former conquests.
There are many examples of this in history. In Russia’s own experience we could see how throughout the last 25 years all the social guarantees have been constantly and ceaselessly taken away from our population, ranging from pensions to healthcare system. The Russian bourgeoisie has been taking away all of the things workers had in the Soviet society.
Why does it happen this way? Because this is the law of capitalism. All of the social guarantees are precious and they can only exist in a society in which profit is not the main driving force of the economy. The Russian bourgeoisie has to choose between enriching themselves, something which is dictated by the laws of capitalism, and spending money on social benefits for the Russian population. Obviously, it chooses the first, especially since Russian workers don’t really oppose the fact that, with every day, they are being robbed more and more.
But they must understand that the bourgeoisie will not rest until it takes away everything from hired workers – until it rids them off pensions, the opportunity to get free medical help and free education, until it liquidates sick leave and unemployment benefits, until it cuts wages so much a piece of bread on the table in workers’ households will seem like luxury, until it makes the workers and their families live in underground shelters by taking away their homes because of loans, etc.
You think we are exaggerating? Unfortunately, we aren’t. The realities of some of the former Soviet republics are a clear confirmation of that. Only the Russian proletariat itself can stop the process of this progressing robbery, if it makes the country’s laborers join their efforts and stand together as a united front against the bourgeoisie, throwing these parasites and exploiters off their backs and making them live off their own labor.
G.Gagina
MLLM “Work Way”
[1] “The Russian middle class is three times less than the official statistics” // The Institute of Contemporary Development. URL: http://www.insor-russia.ru/ru/news/about_insor/378 (date of request: 20.10.2018)
