"A society is transitional when its institutions are grouped round antagonistic power centres and when the relationships between them are not regulated by legitimate and universally recognised mechanisms but by a more or less open struggle". (101)

It will be recalled that Fantham and Machover see the Russian Revolution as an initial success, which degenerated (102) and Rakovski accepts this too and would have used the terms transitional society to describe the early period. In his view, the degeneration occurred more rapidly than the previous authors allow and after 1920, it would not have been correct to picture a society in transition because,

" . . . as soon as the state apparatus extended its power to the countryside by collectivising agriculture and created the economic base for this power by means of forced industrialisation, the class relations and the division of labour of Soviet Russia were integrated in a unified system capable of reproducing itself". (103)

Holding these two fundamental propositions, Rakovski is travelling the same road as Fantham and Machover in rejecting any unilinear conception of historical materialism,

"Within the traditional structure of historical materialism there is no place for a modern social system which has an evolutionary trajectory other than capitalism and which is not simply an earlier or later stage along the same route". (104)

This "traditional structure" is attributed partly to a positivist tendency in Marx which mirrored an important aspect of social science at that time and partly to the interpretation of Marxism upheld by the Second International, where unilinear evolutionism was an important aspect. It was simply outside the universe of discourse, then, to even envisage,

" . . . the hypothesis that the Soviet-type societies are sui-generis class societies existing alongside capitalism". (105)

If nothing else, then, Rakovski reinforces the rejection of the "stages" theory apparent in the previous section. Because a commentator defines the Soviet Union as a workers' state "between" capitalism and socialism, as state capitalist, capitalist or socialist, it by no means can be extrapolated from the definition itself that they are looking for facts to slot into a predetermined schema, but it is necessary to carefully look at the argumentation underlying the definition. On the contrary, one would not reject a definition only because it did happen to concur with a "unilinear" process or ascribe profundity to the bureaucratic state collectivist analysis simply because it did not. This is a point about subjective considerations but, as always with this type of subject, it is as well to recall it explicity.

The major difference which Rakovski notes between capitalism and Soviet-type societies are enumerated below, but it is important to state that he sometimes sees similar phenomena exhibited by both systems as attributable to different forces. This will become obvious as we proceed

The "single essential structural difference" between these particular systems is portrayed as "the ruling class's relation to property" (106) i.e., the ownership of property by a section of the ruling class under capitalism and the absence of such a stratum in Soviet-type societies. Rakovski by no means accepts this classic notion uncritically and argues his way through conceptions of the Soviet rulers as a collective property owning class and the lack of direct ownership, rather than control, which typifies contemporary capitalism before adhering to it. (107) A convergence is seen between the two systems regarding the social organisation of factories and enterprises and the hierarchies commanding them with the difference being that in Soviet type systems, "the hierarchy of factories and enterprises is part of the unified state administrative hierarchy". (108) Technological innovation in the two systems is seen as similar, in that the East imports and imitates technology from the West, yet this very fact indicates a difference in the two systems as this technological backwardness of the Soviet systems is seen as due to the historically delayed industrialisation of Russia, but - and this is important - as a process which "originates in the working of the system itself". (109) A weakness of the Soviet system is seen, as consumer goods and some kind of market system is seen as necessary for efficient distribution,

" . . . the Soviet-type economy is imitating the supply structure that has developed in the consumer market of the developed capitalist countries. . . . In some East European countries a significant part of the housing supply is even administered via market forms". (110)

One could describe Rakovski's perspective of East European societies at length, as he included lengthy discourse on such topics as "samizdat" and the role of the intelligentsia. Whilst he is far less categorical about the precise as opposed to general nature of Soviet type societies than others, and certainly unwilling or unable to provide them with a "label", he does conclude, in a schema reminiscent of Lane's conception of an historical "telescoping" of different modes of production which we encountered earlier (111), that we are dealing with a,

" . . . modern, non-transitional society where there is no capitalist private property but where the means of production are not at the collective disposal of the producers; where there is no bourgeoisie or proletariat but the population is still divided into classes; where economic priorities are not normally determined by the market, but neither are chosen by means of rational discussion among the associated producers and so on". (112)

In this description, Rakovski differs profoundly from all the other references in his book where he explicitly refers to the "working class". (113) True, he mentions in one place that

" . . . in Soviet-type societies no class, not even the ruling class, is capable of organising itself independently". (114)

However, this by no means unambiguous and, in any case, hardly justifies the sweeping assertion above, particularly when compared with the wealth of conflicting internal evidence. In any case Rakovski says immediately afterwards,

"but there would be no point in incorporating the difference in the explanatory model". (115)

Rakovski, however, is not the only East European Marxist to consider "The Working Class as an Inapplicable Concept in Proto-Socialist Society" as the title of chapter seven suggests. (116) Again, the focus is on the inability of the working class to organise itself collectively and I quote at some length,

"The essence of our internal situation is precisely expressed in the way that the working class has no other cadres and no other organization than that by which it is dominated. Insofar as the workers confront the new state as the greatest capitalist, i.e. in the very respect in which they still maintain their old identity as wage-workers, they stand in this confrontation without any other leaders than a few spokesmen who arise spontaneously and are quite untested. The unions, the original fighting organizations for their particular class interests, appear almost exclusively in a supporting function for the state machine (even if this function of care and control may in itself be very pleasant). Deprived of these associations which are adapted to their immediate interests, the workers are automatically atomized vis-a-vis the regime. They are in any case no longer a "class for itself" and not at all so in a political sense". (117)

Neither Rakovski, nor Bahro have any economic grounds for dismissing the working class from the universe of discourse. If it could be shown that wage earners have surplus value expropriated from them only to remunerate their labour power (which would no longer be a commodity) and if such value remaining could be factored into the total social product, which in a socialist society would directly benefit the wage earners, then this would be an objective fact. It would imply a relatively high level of democratisation and an evolvement towards an non-class structured society. This would indeed make if difficult to talk of a "working class" in any traditional sense, and, at the least, we would be perceiving a class moving towards historical obsolescence. But both authors assessment of the working class - a term they both still use - as an "inapplicable concept" rests on the repression and political disenfranchisement of the working class. Appearance substitutes for essence. In both authors accounts, it is implicit that the working class is a "class in itself", but is structurally contained for good from ever reaching the level of organisational and political independence, which would permit the level of class consciousness necessary to perceive its own interests and become a "class for itself". Bahro gives us the example of Poland,

"In Poland in December 1970 the working class was provoked to rebellion by the stupidity of the party-state apparatus, but was then immediately and completely led to an acceptable alternative within the apparatus: the uprising gave the impulse for what one could call a "small proletarian cultural revolution" from above, i.e. the purging from the apparatus of some of the most reactionary inconsiderate and unteachable bureaucrats. This should be seen as an outcome adequate to the socio-economic and political conditions". (118)

With the benefit of hindsight, we can note that this outcome is by no means "adequate", in that later events in Poland revolving around the "Solidarity" movement meant a much higher level of response was elicited from the state. (119) The importance of the points which Rakovski and Bahro make is not that the working class is non-existent or absolutely incapable of engaging in struggle, but, rather, that a protracted period of political repression - with which the conception of socialism has become equated in these societies - means that the politically disenfranchised, therefore necessarily immature. proletariat easily falls prey to reactionary nationalist, clerical and capitalist restorationist leaderships. (120) It would be static thinking to believe that this is historically inevitable, resting as it does on a host of possible factors including international ones. The point to assert is that I understand the working class to exist as a potential agent of social change in Soviet type societies. Only history may reveal this as actuality and go some further way to concluding the argument. (121)

In brief, we can note that Rakovski does not reveal to us any fully worked out model of Soviet type systems. There are distinct similarities between many of his ideas and those to be found in Fantham and Machover's bureaucratic state collectivist model, but they are not included.