Why Russia isn’t Socialist (Pt. 4)

V. Socialism and State Capitalism

Because of the extreme complexity of this turbulent historical period, it seemed necessary to endeavour to prove by, first a general survey, that necessary and specific relations existed between Russian economic and political problems, internal policy and the international role assigned by Communists to their revolution. Thus in dealing with a question in which no aspect can be examined in isolation, we have reversed the usual didactic method which proceeds from the particular to the general. We had as a consequence to dwell at length on the significance of the struggle which, from 1923, took place between the factions at the head of the Bolshevik party. Here were opposed not economic solutions, one of which would have been Socialist and the other not, but the different ways of conserving power in expectation of the International Revolution. It is important that we develop this paramount point in detail in order to trace the evolution of the Russian economy to its present state.

We must repeat that from the first years of the revolution, Bolshevik economic policy is undermined by a contradiction that will eventually sound its death-knell, and which Communists in Russia and throughout the world – up to the turning point marked by Stalin – hope to be able to surmount only though the international victory of Socialism. But whilst awaiting this victory, which becomes increasingly problematic, the Russian population must survive and the forces of production be used as best as possible as they stand, i.e. at the level of a petty-bourgeois mercantile economy. What then is the Bolshevik formula in this matter? It is to orientate the productive effort towards State capitalism.

Why Capitalism? Lenin explains it in his text of April 1921, “The Tax in Kind” from which we draw all quotations in this article (Selected Works, Moscow 1971, Vol. 3).

Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science.

In fact, on the strictly economic level, there is no other “path to Socialism”, other than through the accumulation of capital incumbent on bourgeois society rather than on the power of the Proletariat State in Russia, as the bourgeoisie weren’t to fulfil it, it was the proletariat who took charge of this sine qua non condition of Socialism. Indeed, it is necessary to transform millions of peasants vegetating in the “peasant backwoods” “where scores of versts or trackless country separate the village from the railway” into wage earners so as to be able to abolish wage earning at a later date. To begin with, it is necessary to introduce mercantile exchange in those areas that “are in a realm of patriarchialism and semi and outright barbarism” thus enabling its eventual abolition. Equally, “Large-scale industry” and “modern technology” must be promoted so as to attack “indolent patriarchialism” which constitutes social life in the vast Russian countryside.

For Lenin, and all Marxists worthy of the name, the accomplishment of this gigantic task never represented a realisation of Socialism, but of out and out capitalism. Despite the scandalous confusion caused by the learned savants who transform the conscious criminal falsifications of Stalinism into erudite nonsense, Socialism in not “constructed” like the concrete and steel structures which are indispensable to modern production: Socialism is the freeing of forces that already exists and involves the destruction of the obstacles which obsolete productions sets against them.

The tragedy of the October Revolution is that the Russian proletariat, unlike the Western proletariat if it had come to power, would have two sets of shackles to break rather than just one, with the shackle of bourgeois production remaining indispensable on the Russian scale whilst at the same time obsolete on the International scale.

“Capitalism” writes Lenin “is a bane compared to Socialism. Capitalism is a boon compared with medievalism, small production and the evils of bureaucracy which spring from the dispersal of small producers. Inasmuch as we are as yet to pass directly from small production to Socialism, some capitalism is inevitable as the elemental product of small production and exchange; so that we must utilise capitalism – particularly by directing it into the channels of State-capitalism – as the intermediary link between small production and socialism, as a MEANS, a PATH, and a METHOD of increasing the productive forces”. (Our underlining)

Stalin’s worst crime against the proletariat, more monstrous even than massacring revolutionaries, and worse than submitting the Russian workers to unspeakable slavery whilst leaving the workers of the west to the mercy of their “democratic” bourgeoisie, is having made the means invoked by Lenin into an end, an “historical path” into a final stage, assimilating Socialism totally into capitalism. This involved cooking the books to such an extent that, for the imbeciles and toadies who extol Lenin whilst caricaturing his teaching, the task of Socialism becomes, little by little, the accumulation of capital!

Why then, in the perspective that Lenin formulated for Russia, is it a question of State capitalism? It is because Socialism, whilst not achievable without prior capitalist development, isn’t achievable without “proletarian domination of the State either”. The State that emerges from the October Revolution is proletarian; that is, it derives from a revolution led by the proletariat, directed by a party born out of the proletariat and armed with the doctrine of this same proletariat. This is on the political level. But how Socialist is the state on the economic level? Lenin was quite clear when he considered this point:

“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”.

Lenin, who frequently employs the term “transition” in the text, is interested in defining which stages Russia must pass through, from the economic and social stage they were at the time, to Socialism.

«At present, petty-bourgeois capitalism prevails in Russia, and it is one and the same road that leads from it to both large-scale State capitalism and to Socialism, through one and the same intermediary station called “national accounting and control of production and distribution”».

And Lenin insists:

“Russia cannot advance from the economic situation now existing here without traversing the ground which is common to State capitalism and to Socialism (national accounting and control)”.

Lenin’s idea, even if later shamelessly obscured, is clear: The route Russia must take to arrive at Socialism, is imperatively determined by the economic and social conditions of the country after the revolution. Only the political nature of the State (because the State is proletarian) can guarantee that we will not be stopped along the way, that we won’t halt at an “intermediary stage”, namely “small mercantile production”, “private capitalism” or “State capitalism”. On the contrary we will continue, full steam ahead towards that still distant terminal illuminated with the blazing letters of Socialism! And for which the control of the State makes for the fastest fulfilment. But it must be emphasised, this will only take place given the indispensable condition that the international victory of the proletariat, breaking capital’s might in all its main nerve centres around the world, gives to the “locomotive” of the Russian Revolution the green light all the way down the line!

Today, the main reason why such a lucid perspective is buried in inextricable confusion is undoubtedly the shameless falsehoods spread by Stalinism, but it is also due to the course of historical development in which the proletariat registers defeat after defeat and countless repudiations of its party: the general reflux of the proletarian movement, which is evident in all respects, wreaks most damage on the proletariat’s consciousness of its own history. Glaring evidence for this contention can be found in the fact that the October Revolution has been distorted not only by Stalinism but also by most anti-Stalinists.

This is especially true for the “extremist” view according to which the failure of the revolution is blamed on the “Leninist” conception of State capitalism. We will show that this argument collapses before an indisputable truth; that this economic stage, which for Lenin was a simple “step forward” – has never been attained by Stalinism. The alleged realisation of State capitalism cannot therefore be identified with the triumph of Stalin’s counter-revolution. The latter, in grabbing the levers of the “locomotive of history” converted it into a short winded old rust bucket which, after a half-hearted sally towards State capitalism, contented itself with shuttling up and down between the “intermediate stations” separating it from small production amongst which are the “engine sheds” preferred by the valiant engineers of “Socialism in one country”.

Numerous anti-Stalinists (having at their disposal as criteria, only “democracy”, “political morality” or “the best type of organisation”) condemn Lenin’s teachings, because according to them, he equated Socialism with State capitalism. This is a general aberration common to most critics of the Russian revolution, whether from the left or the right. However, we saw earlier that as far as Lenin was concerned, the formula of State capitalism was required merely to makeup for an extremely inadequate capitalist development; it is an objective strictly dependant on “Russian conditions”, and is entirely inadequate as a condition of proletarian revolution in the developed countries where the first Socialist measures will be taken straightaway, and in particular, the abolition of wage labour. What is international in the October Revolution, is its essential political feature: the universal necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Everything to do with Russian economic problems is, by and large, nothing to do with socialism.

The “extremists” who transform into principle and a question of doctrine, what was only a transitory objective in the proletarian management of a backward economy – even if in good faith – are committing the same error which allowed Stalinism to triumph in the international workers movement.