The economic debates of the 1920s
Conditions for the emergence of socialism
The controversial economic policies which followed the
Russian revolution are rich in lessons. They represented the first fundamental confrontation between Marxists and the reality of economic transformation.
Similar questions will have to be asked by any peripheral country which wants to break with the dictatorship of the capitalist market.
Catherine Samary
The Mensheviks considered the violating the "laws" of history, for going Bolsheviks to be "voluntarists," for beyond the necessary bourgeois revolution in Russia. The unjustified October revolution, in Menshevik thought, is the fundamental cause of the Stalinist degeneration.
Only ('normal' non-voluntarist and democratic?) capitalist development could have created the necessary conditions (adequate level of productive forces?) for a socialist transformation.
History is very short on convincing examples of this argument. Where are the peripheral countries which have overcome their underdevelopment through Menshevik-style reformist capitalism? In fact, 20th century history has revealed the fragility of the social reforms of even the most advanced capitalist countries.
And in any case, the room for manoeuvre of some third world countries, and the social gains of the decades after World War II, are in a large part the consequences of the October revolution. The Marshall plan for reconstruction in Western Europe, the massive aid imperialism poured into South Korea, and Keynesian policies in the advanced capitalist policies were all imposed, in a statist, voluntarist way, by the capitalist elite, in response to their fear of communism. Only new fears of this type, only a new international balance of forces more favourable to the workers, will reverse the current return of capitalism to its "natural," savage form. Bolshevik "voluntarism."
Was October 1917 a real revolution, with a social dynamic, or just a Bolshevik putsch, an avant-gardist attempt to speed up history? According to the non-Bolshevik historian Marc Ferro, "the October insurrection... replaced the old state apparatus, which had remained in place under Kerenski, with a whole constellation of committees and soviets which had exercised part of state power, but had not dared, or had not been able to assume full power. The October insurrection legitimised them. It liberated the impressive energy of these thousands of committees and other popular bodies... It was the soviets which held power in society. Not so much the Congress of Soviets, the supreme body which met for only a few days, to approve the key measures (dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Brest-
Litovsk peace treaty, etc.) but the multitude of local soviets and committees of all kinds." (Marc Ferro, Des soviets au communisme bureaucratique, Collection
Archives, 1980, p.137)
This formidable energy from below could only come from the profoundly oppressive character of the old regime. From the hostility and sabotage of the dominant classes in response to the masses who only asked to live better, and in dignity. From the people's direct experience of repressive violence, not just under the Tsar, but from the new "bourgeois democracy." A violence reflecting Kerenski's social immobilism. According to Ferro, all this is what ensured the osmosis of a growing social radicalism and popular absolutism with the Bolsheviks' intransigence and political absolutism.
"The radicalisation of the masses can be explained by the uselessness of government policies. The government (which, since May, included socialists) introduced. conciliation between the popular and under claims of necessity, procedures for ruling classes. Far from modifying the established order, the negotiations served to perpetuate and consolidate it (p.137)... tism] expressed a certainty, a faith in a In town and countryside, [popular absolusocial regime based on justice and equality. The muzhiks (peasants) only landlord was not cultivating, and the planned to collectivise the land which the forests. The landlords' refusal led them to begin the equitable division of land... in proportion to the number of mouths to feed in each household... when the response was again negative, anger and violence replace the people's goodwill... The same happened in the towns. Workers demanded less inhuman living conditions. It was the brutal and crafty refusals of the owners which led to their expropriation, and, after October 1917, revenge against
Politically, there was a shift after July 1917, when the "democracy" identified itself with the regime, using the army against the popular masses. Kornilov's putsch marks an irreversible Kerenski opposes Kornilov, but is seen more as his rival than his enemy. By not taking measures against | Kornilov's] asso-
The lessons of October 1917*
ciates, he becomes identified with the enemies of a real social revolution. From now on, those who oppose the slogan "all power to the soviets" are considered enemies of the soviets, even when, like the
Mensheviks or the Social Revolutionaries, they participated in the soviets." (p.164-5)
It is easy to say (but hard to show) that there was a bourgeois democratic alternative to Bolshevik power. The terribly destructive victory over the White (counterrevolutionary) armies shows the depth of popular resistance, though it also brought a disastrous heritage and the methods of war communism. We must recognise the context in which these developments took place, and not look at them out of context.
While the New Economic Policy and the debates at that time do reveal a number of errors and problems, they do not confirm the accusation of "Bolshevik voluntaAcceptance of the market
The reintroduction of market mechanisms in 1921 was initially presented and explained as a "retreat" from the vision of a planned society, without money or market, based on, and deepening, étatist methods of war communism. Nevertheless, the necessity of the market was quickly integrated into theoretical and programmatic debates on the "transition to socialism." It was no longer confined to short-term or specifically Russian analysis. In The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky wrote that "the utopian hopes of war communists were, later, subjected to severe and often just criticism."
These utopian visions were often nourished by hopes of an imminent revolutionary victory in the advanced capitalist counties of western Europe. Though Trotsky also wrote that "even in this happy, hypothetical situation, one would have had to abandon the distribution of goods by the state, and go back to commercial methods... Normalising the economic relationship with the countryside was without a doubt the most important, and most difficult task of the New Economic Policy. Experience quickly showed
taken by the Bolsheviks in this hostile environment should not be confused with their crystallisation in "real socialism"
capitalism first developed. According to
Preobrazhensky, it was necessary to ensure industrialisation by a massive transfer
Nevertheless, it is clear that the ban on calculation which had been elaborated the methods of fractions and parties, and the suppression under capitalism." This is just one example of the evolution of soviet Marxist thought, as a result of the NEP experience. The essential debates between the Bolsheviks took place within a shared perspective of a "transition to socialism" same as the "socialism without markets" which was not at all the which had been proposed during the war communism period. There were many choices to be made, and many characteristics of this transformation had to be defined and analysed. What kind of agrarian policy and industrialisation? At what rhythm, with what kind of class alliances? What should be the role of the co-operative and private property sectors? What links and conflicts between plan and market? What price and credit policies were needed to meet the development objectives? What relationship to develop with the world capitalist system? How to incorporate capitalist knowledge and capital itself into a strategy of socialist development?
Different economic "laws"
These questions were part of the debates of the Left Opposition, and of the great (public) controversy between
Bukarin and Preobrazhensky in the 1920s.
Preobrazhensky stressed what was an essential and general characteristic of the conditions for the emergence of socialism:
the existence of a struggle to the death between different criteria of economic efficiency: the "law of value,' mainly through the world capitalist market, was in conflict with socialist goals. Recognising this conflict did not mean necessarily suppressing market mechanisms, nor adopting a policy of autarky. On the contrary, he called for
"maximising" or "optimising"
with world capitalism. While arguing against Bukarin's naive, non-conflictive vision of market relationships in the context facing Russia at that time. Preobrazhensky stressed the importance of state control of foreign trade, to protect the choices made for the development of the domestic economy against the criteria of the world market, represented in the prices, so as not to become an "agricultural semi-colony of world capitalism."
"If we applied world prices to the
USSR," he wrote, prophetically, thirds of our industry would be eliminated because of... its non-essential nature within the global division of labour on a capitalist basis."
Preobrazhensky also stressed the importance of planned industrialisation, to ensure greater agricultural productivity, and to ensure that the peasants found attractive products to buy with their income from crop sales. Rather less convincingly,
Preobrazhensky attempted to identify a
"law of primitive socialist accumulation,"
analogous with the mechanisms by which
28 International Viewpoint #294 of surplus value from petty bourgeois agriculture. The left opposition did not take up this argument. Preobrazhensky had put his finger on the gap between the socialist project of the October revolution, and the material and social base it possessed. He tried to reduce this gap by a productivist logic which undermined the worker-peasant alliance in this peripheral country. He also fell into a conception of planning, in which the workers' somehow all-knowing. This is doubtless state (the Party?) was the reason why, unlike the Left Opposition (which did not adopt his ideas on "primitive socialist accumulation), Preobrazhensky identified with Stalin's forced industrialisation at the end of the 1920s, on the basis of the forced collectivisation of agri-
Once a country breaks from the rule of profit, there is no more a "law" of agrarian policy than of industrialisation. But there are real constraints. Including the sociopolitical consolidation of the social base of the new regime in a heavily agricultural country. The Left Opposition disagreed with Bukarin, who called for "socialism at tortoise speed," based on encouraging the peasants to "get rich." The Left Opposition called instead for a plan of industrialisation, ensuring the material and technical base of a modern agricultural system, based on the poor and middle peasants.
soviétique, Moshe Lewin shows how the La formation objectives of tractor production were not applied, strangling any kind of efficient co-operative logic. He also showed that the better-off peasants (often considered part of the "kulak" being "capitalists." But they were essential group) were far from for supplying the agricultural market, since the great majority of rural communities functioned in a self-sufficient way, without producing an agricultural surplus for the towns... Moshe Lewin shows that accumulated errors in agrarian policy (the low price of wheat did not encourage its production or sale, and there were not enough industrial products to exchange for the agricultural surplus, particularly tractors) contributed to the "cereals crisis.
In other words, there was nothing "inevitable" or organically "pre-determined"
about the Stalinist move towards forced collectivisation, which ended in economic catastrophe... Given the accumulated backwardness of industry, Trotsky argued,
"the collective farms were organised using tools which are only really suitable for small plots." In such conditions, he noted, accelerated collectivisation "becomes an adventure." It was to "liquidate" not only the "kulaks" but a large layer of better-off
And with them Democracy was a decisive and a difficult question, in the hostile context of civil war. The extraordinary measures of the Duma (parliament) favoured the Stalinist degeneration. Nor were all the exceptional measures true emergencies. They had no experience of socialist democracy, and there was little theoretical discussion of the role of the "rule of law" after taking power. Today, it "workers' democracy", the "good version" to see how of the dictatorship of the proletariat) is perverse and limited. economic "dictatorship," against the rule Obviously, there of profit, the domination of capital, and liberties which depend on money. This kind of dictatorship seeks to repress and prevent the private ownership of the major means of production and finance, and ensure respect for the rights of the workers to control production, and to promote the satisfaction of the plan.
But the workers are not the only ones who should have the right to organisation and expression. (Who would decide who is a proletarian and who is not?). There must be the confrontation of ideas, including the ideas of those who are hostile to socialism. The political repression of those who take up arms against the socialist project is another matter. So is the prosecution of sexist and racist expression. This political repression must be the result of a public debate and public control over the means and goals of the restrictions imposed.
Without universal, individual liberties, collective rights are quickly perverted
Though citizenship is abstract, unequal.
without collective rights, possibly linked to a right of veto on specific questions, making it necessary to have procedures and institutions for dealing with contlicts
(women's oppression, national questions.
struggles for workers' emancipation).
Obviously, this implies many problems, and requires more complex answers than Marxists at that time realised. The key seems to be finding mechanisms not to suppress conflicts, but to widen the horizons of the debate, to bring into discussion actually existing forms of oppression and injustice and unsatisfied needs, which are expressing themselves directly or indirectly through the conflicts.
"Socialising" both plan and market
It is also necessary to "socialise" the plan and the market. To stimulate all associative forms which make it possible to evaluate services (health, education, culture, public transport...) and goods
(consumer groups and associations). Unly democracy, in forms still to be invented will make it possible to correct the perverse, unseen side-effects of the means chosen to satisfy social needs. Democracy is the "regulator," the "feed-back" which
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* The lessons of October 1917 that industry itself, although socialised,
The lessons of October 1917* will make it possible to reduce the gap between goals and results, and avoid a dogmatic defence of the methods used. In other words, democracy must penetrate all spheres of daily life, wherever collective evaluations can contribute to the efficient satisfaction of social needs. What kind of self-management?
When the revolution started, many factory committees in Russia were struggling against the capitalists for greater workers control over production. The Bolsheviks obviously supported, and won the support of these committees. But they found that the management of factories without the capitalists was very complicated. Lenin initially talked of "state capitalism," controlled by a the workers' state. He was very concerned by the lack of qualifications of those promoted into management positions, and the potentially disastrous consequences of decentralising management decisions to the level of each self-managed enterprise.
Many writers have discussed the difficulties of maintaining activity and mobilisation after the peak of a revolutionary period. Marco Ferro goes further. He demonstrates that, against the warnings of the Workers Opposition and anarchist self-management currents, the Bolsheviks tried deliberately to "domesticate," break-up working class initiative, in favour of a process, a logic in which the party substituted itself for the class.
This is a real problem, but it has to be viewed in connection with the economic problems which had to be solved, and required a macro-economic development plan. But what democracy to accompany this plan? And what mechanisms should the plan contain? In 1936, Trotsky made the following criticisms of
"The plan should be adapted and regulated by two levers: a political lever. created by the real participation of the interested masses in management, which cannot be imagined without soviet democracy, and a financial lever, the result of the effective verification of a priori calculations through a general equivalent. This is impossible without a stable monetary system... The transitional period as a whole requires not the reduction of commodity circulation, but its maximum extension. (p.487)
The October revolution, and the Bolsheviks, were not prepared for these questions. They had no experience, and had not thought about them... Even today, we are far from possessing complete answers. But we do have the benefit of hindsight and experience, including the development and crisis of the Yugoslav self-management system... We know about the costs of the command economy.
It is one thing to say that workers have a right to consultation, and a priority voice (because of their particular knowledge), and quite another to say that, having rejected the bureaucratic plan, the free self-management of the workers can only be individual and local quickly reaches a dead-end. Why should workers be "attached" to "their" enterprise, and only that enterprise, for their whole lives? Could we ensure full employment, and carry out socially progressive transformations of certain enterprises and sectors, in the interest of working conditions and social needs, only at the level of one enterprise or sector? Obviously not. It will be necessary to find mechanisms of regulation which the workers and consumers concerned can control, at the level which is most effective. Local and regional structures will almost certainly be the most important, but only if there is also a higher level of co-ordination, working to reduce the inequalities between richer and poorer regions and countries...
Computerisation is making it easier and easier to combine macro-economic resource management and setting of priorities with a decentralisation of management decisions... It can also facilitate non-market initiatives, by facilitating the expression of needs, and matching them with responses proposing to satisfy them. In other words, computerisation can facilitate the prevision of needs, and bring producers and suppliers together. Technology is making it easier and easier to organise debates on the major choices, which will support a democratic form of planning. [...] Learning from October 1917
The October revolution is not a model. The concepts it generated, like "revolutionary crisis" and "dual power" are still relevant. But it was clearly easier to organise "against" (or in a perspective of taking power) than to establish institutions managing public affairs. Popular control, clearly, is the bridge between the two phases. It is a non-dogmatic way of testing alliances and social compromises in terms of their compatibility with the programme of satisfaction of social needs which the mass movement has elaborated.
The Russian tsarist context did not permit a "dialectic of partial contests." İndeed, there was no trap of reformist management of capitalism for the radicals to fall into. The class antagonisms were too sharp. That made it easier to develop the revolutionary dynamic. But it didn't facilitate the management of the new society... The emergence of a socialist alternative implies learning to resist capitalism from within, with the new logic of the new system germinating inside the resistance, without getting caught up in the old system. It requires new, non-state institutions which can ensure democratic control over public services, the restructuring of the labour market, and regional co-operation between countries. These will be the decisive pillars of the new force for a new society. These structures will bring together workers, intellectuals and actors in the social movements. as we have seen in France since the massive public sector strike of December 1995
The "transition to socialism" needs to be re-thought in the light of the failure of successive revolutionary ruptures, and their bureaucratic degeneration, and the failure of "realist" reformism to avoid being caught up in the management of capitalism. We need to study the internal and external conditions for anti-capitalist struggle, and the necessary resources for the emancipatory socialist project, in an internationalist and historic framework. *
Ath Congres of the Fourth internationa
Transformation and regroupment
The collapse of Stalinism and the continuing capitalist crisis has contradictory effects. Myths and illusions connected to the restoration of capitalism in the post-
Stalinist societies have dissipated, faced with the actually existing market economy.
But reactions to the socio-economic crisis all too often take the form of reactionary tendencies of an ethnic, nationalist, racia or religious character. Hence the urgent need to rebuild a world-wide movement of anti-capitalist struggle, taking account of the recomposition of the workers' movement which is underway as a result of the double failure of social democracy and
Stalinism.
Regroupments of forces determined to learn the lessons of the historical abomination that was Stalinism and to continue, against the winds and the tides to fight against capitalism are being realised in a number of countries
In all the countries where such pos sibilities exist, the organisations of the
Fourth International are ready to be part of the re-groupment process. We consider this as an important step towards the recomposition of the anti-capitalist left on a world scale. At the international level, the Fourth International is an active participant in re-groupment, bringing with it the advantages of a long tradition of combat against capitalism & Stalinism. *
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