The Military Writings of Leon Trotsky, Volume 4 (1921-1923) by Leon Trotsky

Author:Leon Trotsky [Trotsky, Leon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marxists Internet Archive
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

III

Planned Work

Here we come face to face with the question of planned work. The entire next period of Soviet constructive work will proceed under the sign of going over from rule-of-thumb methods, improvisation, administrative guerrilla-ism, to systematic work in accordance with a draft plan. This is a question which far from all of us have thought out as we should. Some will object: ‘He’s talking about us, saying that we work by rule of thumb and anyhow!’ Others, on the contrary, are inclined to be sceptical where planned work is concerned (’Where is it? What is it?’) presenting this scepticism as the very last word in statesmanlike sobriety and revolutionary realism. Sometimes one and the same person uses both sorts of argument, alternately. But if we leave aside cheap and vulgar buffoonery regarding planned work, we find that what all this criticism amounts to is that an all-embracing, universal, ‘strict’ (that is, administratively enforceable) plan is beyond our powers: how can there be any question of such a plan! The Twelfth Congress of the Communist Party [3a] gave a formulation of the tasks of planned economic construction, which, while mentioning the objections referred to above, possesses importance at the level of principle for military work as well.

‘In Soviet Russia’, says the Congress resolution, ‘all the principal means of industry and transport belong to one proprietor, the state, whose active intervention in economic life must necessarily bear a planned character, and, in view of the dominant role played by the state, as owner and master, the planning principle thereby acquires, from the very first, exceptional importance.

‘All previous experience has shown, however, that the plan of a socialist economy cannot be laid down a priori, by theoretical or bureaucratic means. A genuine socialist economic plan, embracing all branches of industry, with their inter-relations and the relation between industry as a whole and agriculture, is possible only as the outcome of protracted preparatory economic experience on the basis of nationalisation, steadily pursued efforts at practical concordance between the work of different branches of the economy, and proper recording of the results.’

Further:

‘It is necessary to make a clean sweep, at the centre and in the localities, of all attempts by departments and institutions to secure some decision or other by roundabout means, by stating that it is urgent or must be done at once, or by improvising: such attempts are to be seen as manifestations of economic short-sightedness and most pernicious survivals of administrative guerrillaism.

‘The success of the work of any department must be evaluated to a considerable extent as a function of its timeliness in submitting drafts and proposals to the State Planning Commission, for comprehensive elaboration and co-ordination. Even more so must the success of the work of the State Planning Commission itself be evaluated as a function of its own timeliness in spotting economic problems, in correctly forecasting the immediate future, and in alerting particular departments to the task of timely coordination, both budgetary and practical, of those spheres and branches of their work which require such coordination.

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