situation was different. The USSR was in the throes of what Stalin was to call the revolution from above. This revolution transformed Soviet society through collectivization in agriculture, planning, and forced draft growth in industry. In these new circumstances the Party leaders found the soviets to be lagging badly.íí Glancing ahead somewhat at random, one finds similar complaints about ìmajor shortcomingsî in the work of the soviets voiced in a similar decree of January 22, 1957, or almost

accomplish see the decree of the Central Committee of July 20, 1926, in KPSS o rabote sovetov: sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1959), pp. 211-22, esp. 219-20. 18 Ibid., pp. 298-302. For some additional details see Moore, Soviet Politics, pp. 136-37. 19 KPSS o rabote sovetov, pp. 472-82. [M OORE ] Authority and Inequality under Capitalism and Socialism 137 What then are the functions of the soviets that change in this manner while the complaints remain nearly constant ? Originally the soviets

century. But property, especially landed property, was distributed fairly equally in comparison with countries where a nobility owned the lionís share of the land, Together with the frontier that created an emphasis on self-reliance, the existence of a large class of independent farmers and artisans supported an ethic of individualism under which each man could claim to be as good as anyone else. And where a man feels as good as anybody else -a sentiment by no means dead even today -he will be

few individuals receive a great deal more, the cut-off point of $50,000 conceals the more striking aspects of in15 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1982-83 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982), Table 692, p. 420. 16 Statistical Abstract of the United States, p. 417, and table 727, p. 440. David A. Stockman, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, asserted that the number of poor people in the U.S. was less than two thirds of

their culture acts corrosively on traditional and rural-based values, especially those that made visible hard work and saving just about the only morally acceptable basis for inequality.20 17 18 19 Business W e e k , May 9, 1983, pp. 84-85. Statisticd Abstract of the United S t a t e s 1982-83, table 713, p. 432. Ibid., table 648, p. 386. On the culture of this rapidly growing sector see Joseph Bensman and Arthur J. Vidich, T h e N e w American S o c i e t y T h e Revolution of the Middle CInss