The Successes of Socialism and the Dangers of Adventurism

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

PART I

We have always emphasized the universal and historical importance of the experiences and the economic successes of the U.S.S.R., and it would be a superfluous repetition on our part to emphasize it here once more. Nothing better reveals today the striking degradation of the world social democracy than its openly manifested desire to make the U.S.S.R. return to the path of capitalism, as well as its active political solidarity with the imperialist conspirators and the bourgeois sabotagers. Nothing better characterizes the cowardice and the vileness of the ruling classes of bourgeoisie society, the social democracy included, than their protestations against forced labor in the U.S.S.R. at a time when the clerk of the hereditary slave-owners, MacDonald, with the aid of the Second International, is oppressing three hundred millions in India and keeping the Hindu people in colonial servitude. Can the comparison be made for one instant between the scurryings of the “coalition” or “oppositional” social democracy and the gigantic work which the people roused up by the October revolution is accomplishing towards a new life?

That is precisely why we Marxists are obliged to put the working class of the whole world on guard with special force and insistence against the dangers that are heaping up and threatening the dictatorship of the proletariat, dangers which are the result of the false policy of a leadership that has lost its head.

The official chiefs, the press, the economists – everybody recognizes that the labors of the five year plan converted into a four year plan are being accomplished under extreme tension. The administrative methods of “emulation’’ show that the rhythms are attained in large measure at the expense of muscles and nerves. We do not for a moment doubt that a certain stratum of workers, above all among the Communists, bring a genuine enthusiasm into the work, and that the broader mass of the workers is drawn by this enthusiasm from time to time into different undertakings. But one would have to be totally ignorant of human psychology and even physiology to believe in the possibility of a mass “enthusiasm” for a work that lasts for a whole number of years.

Mass Enthusiasm In The Civil War

The work is carried on to day with the game methods that were used during the civil war. During the war, as is known, our experience and our munitions were not up to snuff. The masses made up for the omissions by their own superiority in numbers, their dash, their enthusiasm. Even during the war, this enthusiasm was not general, especially among the peasantry. The evaders and the deserters at that time played the same role as the drunkards who are frequently missing from work and the “floaters” who are constantly changing factories. But in certain periods, under the attacks of the Whites, not only the workers but also the peasants flung themselves into the struggle with a genuinely revolutionary élan. That is how we triumphed.

The civil war lasted three years. Towards the end of the civil war the general tension had reached the extreme limit. We gave up the second Polish campaign, in spite of the onerous conditions of the Riga treaty. A profound reaction against the tension and the privations of the three years of civil war began among the masses of peasants and workers. Among the peasantry, this reaction led to uprisings which embraced the fleet and the army. In workers’ circles, it was translated into strikes and the so-called “stalling”. Inside the party, the “Workers Opposition” began to gain in influence. Its strength obviously did not lie in the semi-syndicalist naiveness of its leaders – in general, the dispute of that time did not at all concern the trade unions, as is taught by the stupid official manuals – but in the protest of the masses against the continual tension of forces and in the demand for rest.

In the famous discussion of 1920–1921, the principal argument against the “Trotskyists” of those days, which produced the greatest effect upon the masses, was this: “They want to carry on the work of economic construction with the same methods employed to make war.”

It is in the atmosphere of the reaction against the period of civil war and war Communism that the economic philosophy of the present majority of the Stalinist faction took form: “Slow but sure.” The retreat before private peasant economy, the contempt for planned methods, the defense of minimal rhythms, the detachment from the world revolution – all this constitutes the essence of Stalinism for the epoch of 1923–1928. But the well to do middle peasant – the prop and hope of this policy – became, by the force of things, the rich peasant (Kulak) and seized by the throat the dictatorship of the proletariat, whose industrial basis proved to be terribly backward. The period of presumption and indulgence gave way to a period of panic and precipitation. The slogan was issued: “Catch up with and surpass in the briefest possible time.” The minimum five year plan of Stalin-Krzhyzhanovsky approved in principle by the Fifteenth Congress was replaced by the new five year plan whose essential elements were borrowed from the Platform of the Opposition. That is what determines the character of the declaration of Rakovsky to the Sixteenth Congress: You have adopted a plan which can become a more serious step on the right road and we are prepared to offer you our most loyal cooperation without giving up any of our ideas and reserving the right to defend them in all the disputed questions.

When the Opposition defended – first the necessity itself of elaborating a five year plan, and then of fixed rhythms (the reality proved sufficiently that the rhythms we proposed were not at all illusory, as all the members of the present Political Bureau, without exception, clamored at that time), in a word – when the Opposition fought for an accelerated industrialization and collectivization against the line of 1923–1928, it regarded the five year plan not as a dogma but as a realizable hypothesis. The collective verification of the plan must be made in the process of work; as to the elements of this verification, they do not lie solely in the figures of socialist bookkeeping, but also in the muscles and nerves of the workers and the political sentiments of the peasants. The party must take all this into account, probe it, verify it, sum it up and generalize it.

How the Economic Turn Was Carried Out

In reality, the economic turn towards industrialization and collectivization took place under the lash of administration panic. This panic still rages. It is enough to see the front pages of all the Soviet papers today : there is a complete adaptation to the slogans, the formulae and the appeals of the civil war: front, mobilization, breach in the front, cavalry, etc. ... the whole seasoned now and then with sporting snobbishness: start, finish, etc. How all this must sicken the serious workers and disgust everybody! While, under the terrible conditions of the civil war, we introduced, not without hesitation, the Order of the Red Flag as a provisional measure (Lenin was at first opposed to it and only accepted it later on as a temporary measure), today, in the thirteenth year of the revolution, there are four or we do not know how many more different Orders. But what is more important is the introduction of the uninterrupted working week, the attachment of workers to enterprises, the extreme augmentation of the intensity of labor. If the realization of these exceptional measures has become possible, it is due to the fact that in the mind of the vanguard stratum they have a provisional character, closely bound up with the idea of the five year plan. Just as during the period of the civil war, the workers and peasants bent all their strength to crush the enemy and assure themselves the right to labor and to rest, the vanguard elements of the working class of today sincerely count upon “catching up with and surpassing” the advanced capitalist countries and of guaranteeing themselves against economic and military dangers. Theoretically, politically and psychologically, the idea of the five year plan has become for the masses the problem of the construction of an armored wall around socialism in one country. The workers find in this the only justification for the extreme tension imposed upon them by the party apparatus.

On the twelfth anniversary, Stalin wrote: “We shall yet see which countries are to be ranged among the most backward and which among the most advanced.” Such declarations and others still more categorical were published and reprinted without end. They set the main tone to all the work of the five year plan. In the way of posing these questions before the masses, there are elements of deceit, half deliberate and half unconscious on the part of the bureaucracy, which wants to have the masses believe that the realization of the five year plan will put the U.S.S.R. at the head of the capitalist world. Does not the Kautsky of the apparatus – Varga – believe that the theory of socialism in one country, however absurd in itself, is nevertheless necessary to encourage the workers: the deceptions of the priests for the good of the soul?

Stalin’s “Catching Up With and Surpassing”

For his report to the Sixteenth Congress, Stalin ordered, among many other figures, statistics to prove that at the end of the five year plan the U.S.S.R. “will catch up with and surpass” the capitalist world. The traces of this order are found again in the speech of Stalin. Coming to the central point in the report of the relations between Soviet economy and world economy, the reporter confined himself, unexpectedly, to the following phrase: “We are terribly behind, with regard to the level of development of our industry, the advanced capitalist countries.” And he promptly added: “It is only the acceleration of the rhythms of development of our industry that will permit us to catch up with and surpass technically and economically the advanced capitalist countries.” Is a single five year plan assumed here or a series of five year plans – of that nothing is known!

With his theoretical rudiments, Stalin was simply frightened by the unexpected information with which he had himself supplied, and instead of presenting the party with exact data of our backward state and showing the real extent of the task which consists of “catching up with and surpassing”, Stalin confined himself to smuggling in a small phrase on “our terrible backwardness” (so as to use it in case of need as a justification: there lies the whole art of his politics). As for the mass propaganda, it continues in the spirit of bluff and deception.

But it is not a question of the Soviet Union. The official organs of all the parties of the Comintern do not cease repeating that at the end of the five year plan the U.S.S.R. will be placed in the first ranks of the industrial countries. If that were right, the problem of socialism would be solved at the same time on a world scale. After having caught up with the advanced countries, the Soviet Union with its population of 160,000,000 inhabitants, with its enormous area and riches, would, already in the course of the second five year plan, that is, in three or four years, have to gain a position, in relation to the rest of the capitalist world, of much greater dominance than that which is enjoyed today by the United States. The proletariat of the whole world would be convinced by experience that socialism in one of the most backward countries has created in a few years a living level for the people incomparably higher than that of the advanced capitalist countries. The bourgeoisie would be unable to resist for another day the impulsion of the working masses. Such a path for the liquidation of capitalism would be the simplest, the most economical, the most “human” and the most certain, if it were ... correct. In reality it is nothing but a fantasy.

The realization of the five year plan began in 1928–1929, at a level very close to that of pre-war Russia, that is, at a level of misery and barbarism. In the course of 1924–1930, enormous successes were achieved. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union still finds itself today, in the third year of the five year plan, from the point of view of its productive forces, much closer to czarist Russia than to the advanced capitalist countries. Here are some facts and figures.

Four-fifths of the whole productive population with us is engaged in agriculture. In the United States, for each person engaged in agriculture there are 2.7 engaged in industry.

Industrial work with us is five times as productive as agricultural work. In America, agricultural work is twice as productive as it is with us and industrial work – 3.5 times. The net production per person in the United States is thus nearly ten times higher than with us.

The power of primary mechanical installation in industry in the United States is calculated at 35,800,000 horse power. In the U.S.S.R. it is 4,600,000, that is, almost one tenth as much. If the power of a horse power is compared to the power of ten men it can be said that in the United States, three steel slaves are at work in industry for every inhabitant while in the U.S.S.R. there is but one steel slave at work for every three inhabitants. If the mechanical motive power is taken into account not only in industry, but also in transportation and in agriculture, the comparison would be even more unfavorable for us. Yet mechanical motive power is the surest measure of the power of man over nature.

At the end of the five year plan, the Soviet Union, in case the whole electrification program arranged for should be realized, will dispose of a fourth of the electric power of America, of a sixth of it if the difference in population is taken into account, and of a still smaller fraction of it if the difference in area is considered; and this coefficient assumes that the Soviet plan is realized entirely and that the United States doe not advance one step.

In 1928, the United States produced 38,000,000 tons of pig iron, Germany – 12,000,000 tons, the Soviet Union – 3,330,000. Steel: United States – 52,000,000, Germany – 14,000,000, the Soviet Union – 4,000,000. In the first year of the five year plan our metal production was equal to that of the United States in 1880; just a half a century ago, the United States produced 4,300,000 tons of metal, with a population equivalent to about a third of the present population of the U.S.S.R. In 1929, the U.S.S.R. produced about 5,000,000 tons of crude metal. This means that the consumption of metal for each citizen of the Soviet republic today is close to a third of what it was a half a century ago for each citizen of the United States.

The present metallurgical production in the United States is 28 percent higher than agricultural production; with us, metallurgical production is almost one-eighteenth of the agricultural production. At the end of the five year plan this relationship should be figured at 1:8. It is needless to explain the significance of metallurgy for the industrialization as well as for the collectivization of agricultural economy.

PART II

At the conclusion of the five year plan, the coal consumption per inhabitant in the U.S.S.R. will be one-eighth that of the United States. The Soviet production of oil is seven percent of the world production, the United States producing 68 percent of it, that is, ten times as much.

More favorable relations exist in the textile industry, but even here the difference in our disfavor is enormous: the United States has 22.3 percent of the weaving machines, England – 34.8 percent, the Soviet Union – 4.2 percent. These figures become all the more striking if one applies the number of weaving machines to the population figures.

The Soviet railway system will be increased by the five year plan by 18,000-20,000 kilometers and will thus reach 80,000 kilometers as against 400,000 kilometers of American railways [a kilometer is ap. five-eighths of a mile]. Out of every 100 square kilometers in area, the United States has 51.5 kilometers of railway. Belgium has 370 km., the European part of the U.S.S.R. has 13.7 km., and the Asiatic part has 1 km.

The figures of the merchant marine are still less favorable. England’s share in the world merchant marine is 30 percent, the United States’ is 22.5 percent, that of the Soviet Union – 0.5 percent.

The United States, in 1927, had almost 30 percent of the world total of automobiles, while the share of the Soviet Union was not even to be calculated in tenths of a percent. At the end of the five year plan, 158,000 automobiles are provided for in the country. This means: one machine for more than 1,000 people (today, there is one machine for every 7,000 people). According to Ossinski, at the end of the five year plan we “will easily outstrip Poland” (if it remains at its present level).

False theory indubitably signifies mistakes in policy. From the false theory of “socialism in one country” flows not only a vitiated general perspective, but also a criminal tendency to paint up the present Soviet reality.

Have We Entered into the “Period of Socialism”?

The second year of the five year plan is characterized in all the speeches and articles in this manner: “The national economy of the country has entered into the period of socialism.” Socialism is declared already realized “at its foundation”. Everybody knows that socialist production, be it only by “its foundation” is a production that satisfies the direct needs of man. However, in our country, with a frightful scarcity of merchandize experienced in the land, heavy industry increased last year by 28.1 percent, and light industry by only 13.1 percent, putting a hindrance upon the basic program. Even if this proportion which has been realized is acknowledged as ideally right (which in no way corresponds to the reality) there will nevertheless follow that, in the interest of a sort of “primitive socialist accumulation” the population of the U.S.S.R. is obliged to tighten its belt more and more. But this indicates precisely that socialism is impossible with a low level of production and it is only the preparatory steps towards socialism that are possible.

Is it not monstrous: the country does not rise out of the scarcity of merchandize, the feeding difficulties exist every day, the children lack milk – and the official philistines declares: “The country has entered into the period of socialism.” Could socialism be more fraudulently discredited.

In spite of all the economic successes in industry and agrarian economy, the storage of grain today represents more of a “political campaign” than an economic operation, in other words, it is realized by state coercion. During the reign of the epigones, the word “symtchka” (alliance with the peasants) was spoiled in every sense, but they forgot to give it the only correct sense, which consists of creating economic relations between town and country which permits the country to exchange its products, voluntarily and with ever-increasing interest, for industrial products. Thus, the success of the alliance with the peasantry consists of the diminution of “political” methods for the storage of grain, that is, of coercion. This can be attained only by the closing of the scissors of industrial and agricultural prices. But Stalin has affirmed, thirteen years after the October revolution, that the scissors are only “bourgeois prejudices”. In other words he acknowledged that the scissors are spreading instead of closing. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the very word “smytchka” has completely disappeared from the official dictionary.

A grain storage official, in explaining the slowness of the storing by the insufficient pressure of the local power on the Kulak, makes the following reflection:

“The calculations and the maneuvers of the Kulak are not at all complicated. If he is taxed with three tons, he can make up for them by a penalty of 400 rubles. It is enough for him to sell upon the speculative market half a ton in order to recover his penalty with a surplus and thus retain for himself two and a half ton of grain.”

This striking reckoning means that on the speculative market the price of grain is at least six times higher than the state price, perhaps even eight or ten times higher, since we do not know at what the surplus is to be valued. This is how the scissors, which are only bourgeois prejudices to Stalin, pierce through Pravda and show their two points.

The communications on the progress of grain storage are given every day in Pravda under the epigraph: “The struggle for grain is the struggle for socialism.” But when Lenin employed this phrase he was far from thinking that the country had “entered” into the period of socialism. The fact that one is obliged to fight – yes, to fight! – for grain, simple grain, shows that the country is still extremely far off from the socialist regime.

The elementary foundations of theory cannot be trampled upon with impunity. One cannot confine himself to the socialist forms of production relations – forms which are immature, rudimentary, and in agriculture, exceedingly fragile and conflicting – and make an abstraction of the principal factor of social development – the productive forces. The socialist forms themselves have or can have an essentially different social content in accordance with the level of technique. The Soviet social forms on the basis of American production – that is already socialism, at least in its first stage. The Soviet farms on the basis of Russian technique – are only the first steps in the struggle for socialism.

If one takes the level of present-day Soviet life, the daily life of the toiling masses, the cultural level, consequently, and the number of illiterates – and if one does not lie, does not stuff his mind, if one does not deceive himself or others, if one is not addicted to the vice of bureaucratic demagogy – then it must be honestly recognized that the heritage of bourgeois and czarist Russia constitutes 95 percent of the daily life, morals and customs of the overwhelming majority of the Soviet population, while the elements of socialism represent only 6 percent. And this is in no way in contradiction with the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet regime, and the enormous successes in economy. All this is the scaffolding around the future edifice, or rather around one of the corners of this edifice. To tell the worker-builders who are erecting this scaffolding with bricks and cement, who frequently do not appease their hunger and are liable to fatal accidents, to tell them that they can already move into this house – “we have entered into socialism!” – is to make fun of the builders and of socialism.

Four Years or Five?

We are decidedly opposed to the lightness with which the untested five year plan has been converted into a four year plan. What do the facts tell us on this subject?

The official figures of the growth of industrial production mount for the second year to 24.2 percent. The growth provided for the second year of the five year plan (21.5 percent) is thus exceeded by 2.7 percent, but it is behind the four year plan by almost 6 percent. If one takes into account that with regard to the quality and the retail price there is a considerable retardation and that the calculable coefficient is attained by the lash, it will be clear that in reality the second year unfolded itself according to the rhythms of the five year plan and in no case according to the rhythms of a four year plan.

In the field of fundamental construction, the provisions for the year 1929-1930 have not been realized; almost twenty percent is lacking; the greatest retardation shows itself in the construction of new gigantic metallurgical factories, in the installations of coke production, in elementary chemicals and electrical construction, that is, in the fields which constitute the basis of all industrialization. At the same time, the decline in construction costs of 14 percent provided for in the plan has been realized only up to 4 percent. It is clear, without commentary, what is the meaning of this bookkeeping four percent dragged out by the hair: let us be thankful if the construction costs have not increased. The combined coefficient of retardation of the plan will thus be greater than 30 percent and not 20 percent. There is the heritage which falls to the third year in the sphere of capital construction.

The “gaps” in the plan cannot be filled at the expense of light industry, as was usual to a certain extent in the first two years, since the most important retardation in the plan is to be observed precisely in the sphere of the production of finished objects. According to the five year plan, light industry should have risen in 1929–1930 by 18 percent; according to the four year plan – by 23 percent. In reality, it rose only by 11 percent (according to other data, by 13 percent). Yet, the dearth of merchandize requires extraordinary efforts in the sphere of light industry.

It has been stated that one of the specific tasks of the supplementary quarter introduced between the second and the “third” years was the “stabilization by every possible means of the monetary circulation and of the entire financial system”. This is an official admission for the first time that the financial system is shaken up at the end of the first two years of the five year plan by an empirical leadership devoid of all planning. The monetary inflation signifies nothing less than an uncertified loan contracted at the expense of the years to come. Therefore it will be necessary to repay this loan in the next few years. The appeal for the stabilization of monetary circulation demonstrates that although “we have entered into the period of socialism” it is necessary not to liquidate the chervonets, but rather to keep it intact. As to the theory, here it is simply turned upside-down.

Past Mistakes and the Fate of the Plan

In this ailing state of the chervonetz all the errors, all the false calculations, all the precipitations, disproportions, gaps, deviations and dizziness of the economic direction of the Centrists is summed up. The ailing chervonetz constitutes the heritage of the first two years of the five year plan. To surmount the inertia of inflation is not on easy task. The application of the financial plan in the first month of the supplementary trimester bears witness to that. But what we must not forget above all is that the success of the stabilization of the chervonetz (which is absolutely indispensible) bear the germs of a no less great deflation in industry and in economy as a whole. Uncertified, and especially, secret loans, made at the expense of the future do not go unpunished.

As to the general growth of industrial production for the past two years, the figure is 52 per cent against 47 per cent provided for by the plan, that is to say, an accountable increase of only 4.5 per cent. If we take into account the retardation from the point of view of quality, we can say with certainty that in the best case we have approached during the first two years the previsions of the plan, and that “as a whole” only, that is to say, if we regard a whole series of internal disproportions only in the abstract.

The characterization that we have made of the weighty heritage of the first two years of the five year plan does not reduce in the least the significance of the successes that have been acquired. These successes are enormous in their historical importance and all the more significant because they were obtained despite the uninterrupted errors of the leadership. At the same time, the actual acquisitions not only do not justify the lightheadedness with which the jump is being made from five years to four years, but do not even give any guarantee for the execution of the plan foreseen for five years, because that necessitates the payment exacted by the disproportions and “gaps” of the first two years in the course of the three years to come. The less the leadership will prove capable of foresight, of raising their ears to warning, the heavier will the debt become.

To verify the progress made by the five year plan, to keep an eye on some branches, to curb others – not on the basis of a priori figures that are inevitably imprecise and conditional, but on the basis of a conscientious study of experiences – that is the chief task of economic direction. But it is precisely this task that presumes democracy in the party, in the trade unions and in the Soviets. The good progress of socialist construction is impeded by the ridiculous and at the same time monstrous principle of the infallibility of the “general” leadership, which is in reality only inconsistency and the general danger.

PART III

Pravda itself (October 27) is compelled to observe:

“We are experiencing difficulties in the supply of food and industrial commodities for current use.

“We are still experiencing a great shortage of metal, of coal, of electrical energy and of building materials for the full assurance of the rhythms undertaken in fie socialist construction.

“The transportation of industrial and agricultural products is far from being assured by our transport service.

“National economy is experiencing a pressing shortage of factory hands and of cadres of skilled workers.”

Does it not flow from all this that the passage from the five to the four year plan was a flatly adventurist step? For everybody, except Pravda.

“The delay in fundamental construction in 1929–1930,” writes Pravda, “in spite of the absence of objective causes, was a pretext for the agents of the Kulaks in the party – the Right wing opportunists – to raise new howls on the subject of the intolerable rhythms adopted by the party.” (November 3, 1930)

In this way the Stalinists are, better than anyone could, clearing the ground for the Right wing by reducing their divergences with it to this dilemma: four or five years? However, this question can be decided not in a “principled” manner but only empirically. In this dispute, which is measured by a difference of twelve months, it is still difficult to define two distinct lines. Yet this bureaucratic manner of posing the question gives us the exact measure of the divergences between the Right and the Centrists in the evaluation of the Centrists themselves. The relations between them is as four to five, which makes a twenty percent difference. And what will happen in case experience should show that the plan will not come to be realized in four years? Would that mean that the Right wing is correct?

Between the second and the third years the so-called supplementary trimester (October, November, December 1930) was inserted. The third year of the five year plan now begins officially on January 1, 1931. without taking into account this supplementary trimester. The divergence with the Right wing is thus reduced from twenty to fifteen percent. What purpose do these worthless methods of procedure serve? They serve the purpose of “prestige”, but not of socialism.

The gaps that they are compelled to stuff up with the supplementary trimester came into being, according to Pravda “in spite of the absence of objective causes.” This is a very consoling explanation but It replaces neither the uncompleted factories nor the unmanufactured commodities. The misfortune is that the subjective factors like “incompetence”, “the absence of initiative”, etc., are governed by the subjective element, that is, by the bureaucratic apparatus, only to a certain extent, and beyond these limits the subjective factors become objective fetters since they are determined in the last analysis by the level of technique and of culture. Finally, even the “gaps” which are actually engendered by subjective causes, for example, by the myopia of the “general” leadership, also become objective fetters since they are de-[line missing] possibilities of further development. If opportunism is characterized by a passive adaption to objective conditions (“chvostism”). adventurism, which is the antipode of opportunism, is characterized by its wanton and disdainful attitude towards the objective factors. The leitmotiv of the Soviet press today is: “Nothing is impossible for a Russian.”

The articles of Pravda (Stalin himself remains prudently silent) prove that foresight, collective experience, flexibility in economic direction, will, in the future as in the past, be replaced by the “general” knout. Pravda recognizes, in a series of cases, that “faltering was liquidated less by production than by the revolutionary pressure of the masses” (November 1). The meaning of this avowal is quite clear.

It is obvious that if it were really a question of outstripping in the course of the coming two or three years the advanced capitalist countries and in this way to assure the invulnerability of socialist economy, then a temporary pressure, no matter how heavy it might be for the muscles and nerves of the workers, would be comprehensible and even justified. We have seen above with how much ambiguity, deceit and demagogy this question is presented before the workers. The uninterrupted play on the nerves threatens to provoke a reaction in the masses incomparably graver that of the end of the civil war.

This danger is all the more acute and menacing since not only will the problem of “catching up with and outstripping” not be solved, even admitting that the five year plan is completely realized, but the plan itself will never be realized in four years, in spite of the extreme extension of forces. What is still more serious is that the adventurism of the leadership renders the realization of the plan in five years less and less likely. The stupid and blind obstinacy of maintaining the plan intact and to the letter in the name of the “general” prestige, makes inevitable a whole series of crises, which can retard the economic development and unleash an open political crisis.

The U.S.S.R. and the World Market

Thus the summary results of the production increase, unusual in its sweep, do not trace the real picture of the situation, for they do not characterize the economically and politically unfavorable conditions in which the third year of the five year plan began (October 1, 1930). A more concrete economic analysis shows that the arbitrary statistics of the successes hide a series of profound contradictions:

1. between the city and country (the price scissors: the lack of food products and raw materials; the lack of industrial commodities in the country);
2. between heavy and light industry (enterprises not supplied with raw materials and the shortage of commodities);
3. between the real and the nominal purchasing capacity of the tchervonetz (inflation);
4. between the party and the working class;
5. between the apparatus and the party;
6. within the apparatus.

But aside from these so-called internal contradictions, there is a contradiction which, by the logic of things, acquire an ever greater significance: the contradiction between Soviet economy and the foreign market.

The reactionary utopia of an enclosed socialist economy developing harmoniously on the internal foundations with the safeguarding of the monopoly of foreign trade, constituted the point of departure of the whole plan. The specialists of the State Planning Commission, willingly running counter to the “bosses” and connecting their aims at sabotage with the prejudices of the masters, constructed the first draft of the five year plan not only with a declining curve of the industrial rhythms but also with a declining curve of foreign trade: they provided that at the end of the next ten, twelve years, the U.S.S.R. would have completely ceased all importation. And since, on the other hand, the same plan provided for an increasingly abundant harvest, and consequently increasing possibilities for export, a question remained unanswered: what will be done with the surplus grain as well as with the other surpluses that the country will have produced? Surely they were not to be dumped into the ocean? However, before the first draft of the five year plan was submitted, under the pressure of the Opposition, to a revision in principle, the very development of things produced fissures in the theory and practise of an isolated economy. The world market presents to the economy of every country, socialist as well as capitalist, immense and prodigiously inexhaustible reserves. The growth of Soviet industry creates technical and cultural needs on the one hand and new contradictions on the other, thus obliging it to resort in ever greater measure to the reserves of foreign trade. At the same time, the development of industry which is unequal because of natural conditions, engenders in various branches a pressing need for exporting (for example, oil, wood), long before industry as a whole has begun to satisfy the elementary requirements of the country. The revival of the economic life of the U.S.S.R. thus leads from all sides not to the economic isolation of the country but quite the contrary to the growth of its relations with world economy, and consequently of its dependence upon world economy. The character of this dependence is defined on the one hand by the specific gravity of Soviet economy within world economy, but in a more direct manner – by the relationship between the net cost of the Soviet products and the net costs of the advanced capitalist countries.

The entry of Soviet economy upon the world market has thus taken place not in accordance with the provisions of the plan, with a broad perspective, but on the contrary despite all the provisions, under the pressure of pitiless necessity, when it was shown that the import of machinery, of [line missing] different matter of life and death for all the branches of industry. Imports cannot be extended except by the extension of exports.

The Soviet state exports because it cannot help but export and it sells at prices which are determined today by world economy. By that, Soviet economy not only falls to an increasing degree under the control of the world market, but more than that, it is drawn – in a refracted and altered way, it is understood – into the sphere of influence of the oscillations of the world capitalist conjuncture. The export plan for the year 1929-1930, far from being realized according to the provisions, has been considerably injured as regards financial results because of the world crisis. This is how one of the multiple discussions between the Left Opposition and the Centrists finds its solution. Already in the struggle for the necessity of elaborating the five year plan, we advanced the idea that the five year plan is only the first stage, after which we would have to pass over in the briefest possible time to a plan with a perspective of eight or ten years, in order to embrace an average period for renewing the stock of tools, and, at the same time to adopt ourselves to the world conjuncture. A stabilization of post-war capitalism, no matter how frail – said the representatives of the Opposition – will lead inevitably to the reappearance of the commercial-industrial cycles disturbed by the war, and we will be obliged to build our plans not upon the alleged independence from the world conjuncture, but upon the intelligent adaptation to this conjuncture, that is, in such a manner as to be able to gain as much as possible from the economic rise and to lose as little as possible from the crisis. It is futile to recall now the national-socialist commonplace which the official leaders, and Stalin and Bucharin in the first place, set up against these previsions which are being realised today. The less the leaders of economy foresaw the simple logic of things the more does export today assume a chaotic character.

From the brief history of Soviet foreign trade and the difficulties encountered last year by exports, always very inadequate in volume, in spite of its forced character some conclusions, simple but very important for the future, must be drawn. The greater the success of the development of Soviet economy in the future, the more extended will have to be the foreign economic relations. The contrary theorem is still more important: it is only by an ever greater extension of exports and imports that economy will be able to overcome in time the partial crises, to diminish the partial disproportions, to level the dynamic equilibrium of the various branches and in this way assure accelerated rhythms of development.

However, it is precisely here that, in the final analysis, we run into the decisive problems and difficulties. The possibility of making use of the reserves of the world market for the development of socialist economy is directly determined, as we have said, by the relations between the domestic and the world net costs of a unit of merchandize of a fixed, standard quality. However, the bureaucratic course of the rhythms up to now has not only not permitted us to obtain any successes in this field, but even of posing this question in its genuine aspect

In his report to the 16th Congress, Stalin said that the quality of our production is “sometimes scandalous” (it is with such explanations that the bureaucracy stuffs up every hole). This looks very much like the expression concerning our “frightful” backwardness. Instead of exact data, we are served up expressions which have the air of being very strong, but which only conceal the reality with cowardice: the backwardness – “frightful”; the quality – “scandalous”. Yet, two figures, two average comparative coefficients would have given the party and the working class an incomparably more valuable orientation than all the mountains of cheap journalistic statistics, which fill the ten hour speeches of the sages of our times and which seek, in this field also, to replace quality by quantity.

The sale of Soviet products even at prices lower than the net costs is – in the interests of imports – inevitable in a certain measure and is fully justified from the point of view of general economy. But only in a certain measure. The increase of exports will encounter in the future ever greater obstacles, as a result of the difference in domestic and world net costs. Here the problem of comparative coefficients of the quality and quantity of domestic and world products is posed with a special acuteness and an obvious necessity. The fate of Soviet economy is decided economically in the knot of foreign trade, just as it is decided politically – in the knot which binds the C.P.S.U. with the Comintern.

* * *

The world capitalist press has represented the growth of Soviet exports as dumping, and the mercenary bourgeoisie of the Russian emigration and its domesticated “democracy” have seized upon this catchword – and there is nothing astonishing in this, just as there is nothing astonishing in the fact that the mercenary emigrant press publishes the revelations of the national defense secrets of the U.S.S.R. in the interests of Rumania, of Poland and sharks of more substantial size. It is not their dastardliness which is astonishing, it is their stupidity which, for that matter is not surprising either: do not ask for too much intelligence from the mercenary bourgeoisie. By representing the Soviet “dumping” as a threat to world economy, the liberals and the democrats recognized by that alone that Soviet industry has attained such a degree of power that it is in a position to shake the world market. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

It is enough to say that Soviet exports, considerably augmented in its present volume, represents only one and a half percent of world exports. With this, it is impossible to overturn capitalism, rotten though it is. It is only avowed boobies who, without ceasing to be knaves for that, can attribute to the Soviet government the intention of provoking the world revolution by one and one half percent of exports.

What are called the inroads of Soviet economy into world economy is rather, in much greater measure, the inroads of the world market into Soviet economy. This process will be extended until it becomes more and more an economic duel between two systems. In the light of this perspective, we see how infantile is the narrow philosophy according to which the construction of socialism is assured by the victory of the bourgeoisie of one’s own country, after which the relationships with the world abroad is limited to the struggle against military interventions.

Already at the beginning of the world crisis, the Opposition proposed the launching of an international proletarian campaign for the strengthening of economic collaboration with the U.S.S.R. In spite of the fact that the crisis and unemployment made this campaign urgent, it was rejected under all sorts of inept pretexts, but in reality because the initiative for it emanated from the Opposition. At the present time, in view of the world attack against Soviet “dumping”, the sections of the Comintern are nevertheless compelled to conduct the campaign we proposed before in favor of economic collaboration with the U.S.S.R. But how pitiful and eclectic is this campaign, without either clear ideas or perspectives; a campaign of disordered defense instead of a well prepared offensive. Thus, we once more see in the light of this example that behind the bureaucratic clamouring is concealed the same “chvostism”, the same incapacity to take the political initiative in a single important question.

Conclusion

1 To acknowledge publicly that the realization of the five year plan in four years was a false step.

2. The experiences of the first two years and the inserted trimester must be the object of studies and free and cogent discussion by the party.

3. The criteria of this discussion:

A. the optimum rhythms (those which are most reasonable), that is, the rhythms which not only assure the application of the present orders, but still more, the dynamic equilibrum of the rapid growth for a series of years to come;

B. the systematic raising of real wages;

C. the closing of the scissors of industrial and agricultural prices, that is, the strengthening of the alliance with the peasantry.

4. In no case to identify the collective farms with socialism. To follow attentively the inevitable process of differentiation within the collectives, as well as between different collectives.

5. To pose openly and within the framework of the plan the problem of stabilizing the monetary system, otherwise the dangers of panic which bureaucratic deflation may engender will be just as threatening as inflation.

6. The problem of foreign trade must be posed as a cardinal problem in the perspective of the extension of relations with world economy.

7. To work out a system of comparative coefficients between Soviet production and the production of the advanced capitalist countries, not only as a guide to the practical needs of exports and imports, but also as the only correct criterion in the question of “catching up with and outstripping.”

8. To put an end to being guided in economy by the bureaucratic considerations of prestige. Not to gloss over realities, not to keep silent about the truth, not to deceive. Not to qualify as socialism the present transitional Soviet economy which to its level, is much closer to czarist-bourgeois economy than to advanced capitalism.

9. To abandon the false national and international perspective of an economic development which flows inevitably from the methodology of Lenin.

10. To finish once and for all with the catholic church dogma of “general” infallibility, disastrous in practise humiliating for a revolutionary party and profoundly stupid.

11. To revive the party by shattering the bureaucratic dictatorship of the apparatus.

12. To condemn Stalinism. To return to the theory of Marx and the revolutionary methodology of Lenin.