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A thoroughly undialectical materialism is also on the rise in the Soviet Union, manifest in both the aspirations and frustrations of the populace. Emmanuel Todd, a French demographer and political analyst, has theorized that one reason the Soviet leaders may be reluctant to order an invasion of Poland is that they do not want tens of thousands of their soldiers to see that the miserable, mutinous Poles, even in their current distress, are living better than most Soviet citizens. The Poles are fed up with standing in lines. The Soviets have been doing that forever. Even at the end of their lines, light bulbs, milk, soap, meat, fresh vegetables and other basic consumer goods, to say nothing of amenities like toilet paper or tooth paste, are often in short supply or unavailable.
The alienation of the worker from his work is at least as great today at the giant Kama River truck plant in the U.S.S.R. as it was in the Manchester textile mills that Engels studied in the mid-19th century. That is one reason why Soviet workers drink an average of 38 quarts of vodka a year (about three times the American intake of alcohol), show up drunk on the job—or do not show up at all—and their life expectancy is actually dropping because of alcoholism, particularly among Russian males.
The command economy, too, is slowing down if not breaking down. Professor Marie Lavigne, director of the Center for the Study of Socialistic Economies at the University of Paris, points out that since 1965, no Communist country has met the proclaimed goals of its Five-Year Plan: "The desired results that the economies were organized to achieve have simply failed to materialize." And the projections for the next ten years are even gloomier.
The sorry state of morale and well-being do not automatically mean the imminent demise of the system, at least in the cally mean the imminent demise of the system, at least in the U.S.S.R. Far from abolishing poverty, as its defenders often claim, Communism actually controls its subjects, in part, by keeping them poor. Forty-four years ago, from exile in Mexico, an embittered Trotsky speculated that the Soviet system required a measure of demoralization and deprivation. "The basis of bureaucratic rule," wrote Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed, "is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all... When there are few goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of Soviet bureaucracy." In Poland, the lines have led to a breakdown in order; in the U.S.S.R., they are still part of the prevailing order.
Unlike their "fraternal" neighbors in Eastern Europe, the Soviet people have known nothing other than Communist reality. They compare their daily lot more with memories of their own lives ten years ago, or of their parents' and grandparents' 20 and 40 years ago, than with the