VADIM BELOTSERKOVSKY
265
And it is more difficult for educated people who do intellectual work
ro act as pawns of an authoritarian regime than it is for manual
workers .
What kind of authoritarian regime then are we dealing with?
More than by material cares , more than by the strait jacket of
pseudo-Marxism , most Soviet people are worn down by authoritarian
and arbitrary rule , by the bureaucratic anarchy where the least
initiative is inconceivable without official blessing , where rules and
regulations are sometimes so self-contradictory that the implementa–
tion of one entails the violation of others and the risk of punishment .
At the slightest relaxation of pressure , pent-up dissatisfactions would
break out. And should anyone then try to reimpose an authoritarian
regime , it would be resisted.
Everything in Flux
Finally , we must consider the emergence of a monolithic social
stratum , the " worker-engineers ," which might be the main hope of
future democracy .
Most engineers and technicians come from and live in a
working-class environment. They have no special privileges and are
exploited at least as much as the workers themselves ; many of them
earn even less than skilled workers . There is also no serious
cla -competition among engineers , and they are always in short
upply , especially in the provinces .
The engineers , designers , and technicians , who represent a large
and growing percentage of the "factory folk , " are intellectualizing
the working class . What they stand for is a radical but gradual
transformation; above all they do not want a return
to
capitalism .
They are opposed
to
the means of production reverting
to
private
hands via the sale of shares (the only conceivable method of
re roration) , because the present privileged elite and the clandestine
wheeler-dealers who have lived as parasites on the bureaucratic system
would end up as majority shareholders under the new system .
The worker-engineers and the scientific-technical intelligentsia
as a whole are interested in
constructive
reforms . More than anyone
else , they associate the lack of freedom with
authon'tanan
bureau–
cratic disorder, and yearn for
order
based on democracy and justice .
They are not tempted by the possibilities of blind destruction or
