Perceptions of social justice in the Soviet Union are undergoing a dramatic change. In this paper I try to find the major direction of this change which I see in the shift from political justice to market justice. The perceived fairness or unfairness of the distribution of social goods and thereby the agreement of the population with the institutions which play a role in this distribution reveals a central facet of the political culture. When these institutions are rejected, we find widespread feelings of injustice.
The empirical, psychologically oriented research on social justice provides explanatory models of opinions on fairness within three theoretical paradigms. The first one is equity theory. It attempts to explain justice judgements by comparisons of equal rewards to investment ratios in exchange relations. A second group of models employ theories of relative deprivation. These theories reflect on the referent persons or groups we choose for comparisons (see, for example, Runciman 1966). Thirdly, social perception theories explain fairness judgements by the position of an individual in the society. But in order to understand the difference of the patterns of perceptions of justice in societies and their change we must look more attentively not at what we get, but how we get it. In recent psychological research on distributive justice this is recognised, leading to a consideration of `procedural justice', but all the research is limited to laboratory experiments.
In real life it makes a great difference whether the distribution of socially desired goods came about through market processes or political distribution processes. In western societies empirical evidence shows that distributions based on market mechanisms are perceived as being more just than distributions which are a product of political allocation processes (Hochshield 1981; Lane 1986). If we compare the data of perceptions of justice in countries with the predominantly market systems of distribution and countries with political systems, we would find that the sense of injustice is higher in the latter, while the objective inequalities are much smaller there. I can refer here to the comparative survey of perceptions of inequality conducted by Scase in England and in Sweden. Sweden, being a market society, but with high level of redistribution, demonstrated more feelings of injustice among the public (Scase 1977).
The very positive thing about the market is that it is believed that it is governed by natural laws; and a person is himself responsible for success or failure. But when allocations are not determined by the market but follow from different structural or political restrictions, when, for example, an occupational career of a person is determined by external factors and not simply by his own performance, people tend to feel injustice. That is what Parkin was arguing when he proposed that the link between private troubles and justice evaluation is stronger in socialist countries, because of the high invisibility of the state in the allocation of goods in the former in contrast to the relative invisibility of allocation principles in the latter (Parkin 1972).
What were the principles of political distribution in Soviet society? Certainly, the distribution was directed at the equality of outcomes. The latter found expression in the unprecedented levelling of the incomes of occupational groups differing sharply in skill-level and social significance of work, but quite naturally an unequal pattern of distribution originated, thanks to the caste formation of the nomenklatura with its life-long guaranteed access to power and privileged access to social wealth. So an average citizen is confronted every day with the irrationality of the levelling principle, being fully deprived of autonomous activity with rational and controllable results, while being aware of the existence of a privileged minority that is not subject to such depersonalising limitations.
What then gave the Soviet-type regimes, that are very prone to be perceived as unjust, their relative, though not eternal, stability? There were of course certain specific factors that obviously played their role in the Soviet Union. First of all, there is the strong tradition of economic egalitarianism in the Soviet political culture and very vague notions about individualism. This economic egalitarianism coexists with the authoritarian traditions in the political realm. The public in Russia was historically quite indifferent to political freedom. Even the revolutionaries were more interested in the redistribution of wealth that in democracy. Walicki in his book The Controversy Over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists\fR (1969) demonstrated that the Russian narodniki, and then Marxists, were completely disinterested in the problems of democratic government and predisposed to the authoritarian regime.
But one should not overestimate the importance of egalitarian ideology and political culture. A number of western theorists have lately begun to abandon the traditional assumption that social cohesion rests on a consensus about values that govern, among other things, the distribution of social benefits. For example, Mann and Parkin suggested that only those actually wielding power need develop a consistent set of societal values, since the disposessed majority will adopt merely pragmatic attitudes towards existing socio-political arrangements (Mann 1970; Parkin 1972). The principal concerns of most people are matters of everyday life. Abercrombie and his colleagues have argued that dominant ideologies are rarely transmitted effectively through social structures and that their principle effects are on superordinate rather than subordinate groups. The compliance of the subordinate strata is secured by economic constraint, political coercion and the bureacratic mechanisms of school, family, workplace (Abercrombie et al. 1980). Without going into details, all the afore-mentioned were quite strong in the Soviet-type systems.
Another point is that the Soviet system managed to provide certain benefits for the people \*- the welfare state gave jobs, housing, education and medical care. Soviet sociologists have found that the great majority of Soviet people were satisfied with their jobs, the figures being similar to those in the USA. Even among Soviet citizens who emigrated in the 1970s, over two-thirds reported being satisfied with their standard of living, housing, job and medical care in their last years in the Soviet Union.
But one of the basic conditions for general acceptance of the existing patterns of distribution was the assessment of injustice of the alternative systems. As long as private troubles were minimised with a comprehensive social welfare system and by official distortions of comparisons with the capitalist world, it was possible for the regime to reduce the `injustice frame' to particular personal troubles and prevent their translation into criticism of the system. But the simultaneous decline in standards of living and the opening of information channels made private troubles more intense and widespread. At first more criticism began to appear that seemed to focus on what was judged to be illegitimate privilege of the party elite, and not directed at the legitimacy of socialism. But, as the standards of living deteriorated dramatically, the criticism came to apply even to socialism itself. Now we are in the situation of crisis of the statist ideology and this crisis can be characterised by the following features.
In ideal terms people are rejecting the legitimacy of the state and its role in the process of distribution. In an urban survey on economic reform 63% agreed that the state should interfere as little as possible in the distribution of incomes. But the public is still very ambivalent about the role of the state in ensuring social justice. In the same poll 85% thought that the state should give more privileges to people with low incomes and 84% agreed that the state should guarantee to each person a minimal living income.
Almost half also felt that the state should not allow excessive differences between low and high incomes.1 This accords with the strong lingering strain of support for firm rule in the country. In another poll about what was necessary for decisive changes in the economy, 54% supported the establishment of firm order in the country, and 40% favoured reinforcing state control over prices.2 While the market oriented reforms call for a relaxation of state control over prices, only 5% of the public favours flexible prices and fully 60% support the rationing of scarce commodities.3
At the micro level of justice evaluations, involving fairness evaluation of individual rewards, there is a high degree of controversy. Answering the question, `what are the conditions for success in life in the USSR', 45% pointed at hard work, 35% at competence, 15% at abilities. Only 17% mentioned the necessity to know people in the right places, compared with the need `to have rich parents' (9%), or the need `to have parents with higher education' (2%). But these answers are mainly ideological ones \*- the state always proclaimed the equality of opportunities, and they are not connected with widespread beliefs in the individual performance.4
In the Soviet system, where the government is mainly responsible for the well-being of individuals, the attribution of responsibility for the failure of the individual to achieve his goals is much more clearly seen as a failure of society, not the individual. By contrast, as Sennett and Cobb (1973) observe about American society, the individual there is held mainly to blame for his or her failure. The level of satisfaction is linked in the market economies to one's performance, while in state socialist economies it is more directly tied to the perception of the government efficiency in matching the performance of the individual and their rewards. As the polls show, the public is experiencing a deterioration in standards of living. When asked about the sources of the present difficulties, people mentioned the rule of bureaucracy (40%), and inefficient government (39%). If the reforms are to be successful, there will have to be a reorientation of the burden of responsibility from the state to the individual.5
The effects of ascribed and achieved status vary significantly according to the socioeconomic positions of the individuals. Out of simple self-interest, or from the sense that they are unfairly underpaid relative to their training and their perceived relative contributions to the society, the more highly educated and those with higher qualifications are strongly motivated to adopt beliefs that challenge the egalitarian ideology. The working class is more motivated to deny challenges to the fairness of the current economic and political orders out of the belief that they will be worse off in an inegalitarian order. The tension between these groups is likely to remain one of the major sources of political conflict in the Soviet Union.
The regime is now in a dangerous position. The population as a whole has become increasingly dissatisfied with the political system and with the meagre results of economic perestroika. Groups that profited from the old arrangements such as unskilled workers, bureaucrats and collective farm workers are especially unhappy with the government. Meanwhile the regime is under fire from groups that want more radical reforms in respect of property and politics: skilled workers,and the creative intelligentsia. The regime is in danger of losing all of its constituencies and therefore its legitimacy.6