{"id":15150,"date":"2026-09-22T16:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T20:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=15097"},"modified":"2026-10-04T23:49:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T03:49:55","slug":"workers-will-fight-for-their-self-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2026\/09\/workers-will-fight-for-their-self-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"Workers will fight for their self-interest"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>here aren\u2019t very many Marxists around today who would defend central planning as practiced in the Soviet Union from the late 1920s through the 1980s. But there are many who still think some form of central planning is essential to socialism. Marxist Sociology Professor, Catalyst<\/em> editor and podcaster Vivek Chibber isn\u2019t one of them. In an aptly titled\u00a0 recent interview<\/a>, \u201cSocialism Has a Future. Central Planning Doesn\u2019t\u201d, he explained his position.<\/p>\n

Chibber\u2019s critique is based on the top-down, bureaucratic planning as it was practiced in the Soviet Union. As he notes, aside from its clones in Eastern Europe, North Korea, and, for a time China, there is no other actual existing model of central planning to examine. His argument is complex but boils down to the proposition that in an economy of any significant size where there is no market there are simply too many materials, inputs, and products for any commission or central authority to allocate efficiently. Only a competitive market could do this, according to Chibber. Hence misallocation, breakdowns, waste, poor products, wrong incentives, and the inevitable accumulation of these\u00a0 problems lead to a crisis of the system. No doubt this pretty much describes what actually happened in the Soviet Union and its satellites.<\/p>\n

Chibber argues that these are unavoidable features of any centrally planned economy. Before we accept this, and with it the notion that only \u201cmarket socialism\u201d provides a workable model for the future socialist society we seek, we need to look more closely into the Soviet model and the society in which it played out. What is most glaringly absent in Chibber\u2019s general description of the Russian model is the social reality of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s to the bitter end\u2014above all the question of social class. This is all the more remarkable because Chibber is an ardent advocate of the almost exclusive centrality of \u201cclass analysis\u201d when it comes to contemporary politics.<\/p>\n

Socialism is the rule of the working class. Planning is an instrument of the democratic workers\u2019 state for organizing production for human need under its collective political and social rule and the transition to a classless society. While the Soviet Union promoted itself as socialist and in the transition to a classless society, it was anything but. It was, in fact, a highly stratified and bureaucratized society.<\/p>\n