>>2770983same reason it's hard for people who say this to explain how it constitutes "a new class" without abandoning marxism. Djilas who popularized this view completely dropped communism btw. arguing that having a higher income and some material benefits like dachas for vacationing is a class is the kind of thing Trotsky criticized, but it keeps happening
From Isaac Deutscher the biggest trot historian
>What this so-called new class lacks is property. They own neither means of production nor land. Their material privileges are confined to the sphere of consumption. Unlike the managerial elements in our society, they are not able to turn any part of their income into capital: they cannot save, invest, and accumulate wealth in the durable and expansive form of industrial stock or of large financial assets. They cannot bequeath wealth to their descendants; they cannot, that is, perpetuate themselves as a classthis is why I could never take the 'new class' and the maoist/hoxhaist debate about capitalist restoration in the USSR seriously. the only clear restoration happens after perestroika and even then only by 1990 with Gorbachev's 500 days program do they seriously start debating the transition to a market economy and mass privatization. by 1991 gosplan was abolished but only few privatizations happened before 1992. so in short, they were never a new class in the soviet union and only after it was abolished some of the party higher ups and pro-capitalist camp used their advantage to secure wealth and positions in the new capitalist russia. and only some, it's a myth that they all became capitalists. studies show that most of these came from managerial posts in industry and banking or had backgrounds in science and engineering. not to mention the huge role organized crime played.
and trotsky defined the problem as a workers state hindered by a layer of bureaucracy that had necessary roles like sustaining a planned economy but also dangerous, oppressive political power. yet he also explained that the rise of this bureaucracy was unavoidable due to the Russian civil war, the failure of other revolutions, the shitty conditions of Russia and so on.
>Trotsky once predicted that the Soviet bureaucracy would fight for the right to bequeath their possessions to their children and that Post too long. Click here to view the full text.