Lenin's Moscow by Rosmer Alfred; Birchall Ian;

Author:Rosmer, Alfred; Birchall, Ian;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, ebook
ISBN: 4596359
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2016-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

‘State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic . . . No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order.

‘But what does the word “transition” mean? Does it not mean, as applied to an economy, that the present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does. But not all who admit this take the trouble to consider what elements actually constitute the various socio-economic structures that exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question.

‘Let us enumerate these elements:

1. patriarchal, i.e. to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming;

2. small commodity production (this includes the majority of those peasants who sell their grain);

3. private capitalism;

4. state capitalism;

5. socialism.

‘Russia is so vast and varied that all these different types of socio-economic structures are intermingled. This is what constitutes the specific feature of the situation . . .

‘State capitalism would be a gigantic step forward . . . because it is worth paying for “tuition”, because it is useful for the workers, because victory over disorder, economic ruin and laxity is the most important thing, because the continuation of the anarchy of small ownership is the greatest, the most serious danger, and it will certainly be our ruin . . . whereas not only will the payment of a heavier tribute to state capitalism not ruin us, it will lead us to socialism by the surest road . . .

‘In the first place economically state capitalism is immeasurably superior to our present economic system.

‘In the second place there is nothing terrible in it for the Soviet power, for the Soviet state is a state in which the power of the workers and the poor is assured . . .

‘To make things even clearer, let us first of all take the most concrete example of state capitalism. Everybody knows what this example is. It is Germany. Here we have “the last word” in modern large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organisation, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics, and in place of the militarist, Junker, bourgeois, imperialist state put also a state, but of a different social type, of a different class content—a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.’

Lenin would not have dreamt of denying that the nep was a retreat, but it was a retreat which brought Russia back on to the road she would have taken as a deliberate decision if the civil war had not forced her to submit to various measures which constituted what was called ‘war communism’. The delegates had had the opportunity of becoming familiar with these definitions and explanations.

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