the new state had lost its social base. For a time the Bolshevik party substituted itself for the class, basing itself on the perspective of helping the international revolution. But from 1924 on Stalin changed all that. Not only did he seal the fate of the revolution by calling for the building of ‘socialism’ in one country, but he also destroyed the proletarian basis of the party, swelling its numbers with ex-Tsarist officers, factory managers and so on, so that the party that in 1923 was more than 70% proletarian in composition was by 1927 only 30% proletarianised – and completely bureaucratised too.

The state was thus cut loose from its original social base. Having become heavily bureaucratised it moved decisively to take upon itself the role of massivebroadly similar those those of the western countries (i.e. somewhat better than Britain and somewhat worse than Japan), but that they are only able to achieve this on the basis of twice the level of investment. [35] This would suggest then, a rough-and-ready figure for the rate of profit at about 50% of that prevailing in the West.

The Russians themselves have published figures showing how rapidly the rate of profit has been falling in the 12 years 1960–72. They have assessed it according to two indicators as follows:

USSR: Decline in the Rate of Profit 1960–1972

1960

1964

1968

1972

Indicator I

83.20%

71.30%

67.20%

62.90%

Indicator II

60.40%

52.10%

49.40%

46.60%

Indicator I – National income as a percentage of fixed productive capital at the beginning of the year.
Indicator II – National income as a percentage of total fixed and working productive capitals