The Economic Policies of the Left Opposition

[p036] ECONOMIC POLICIES OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION Bukharin ; Argued that savings of the richer peasants would provide for increased investment. class. On the other hand the forces of capitalism, hostile to the revolution, were also strengthened. As Lenin said, the struggle would be a bitter one between the forces of Soviet and capitalist power. Such dangers began to emerge with great clariy in the period after Lenin’s death in 1924. The dangers centred upon reinforcement—in the countryside—of the layer of rich peasants, the kulaks, who increasingly represented a threat to the stability of the regime. As the villages re- covered after 1921 so the differences within the peasantry became more clearly revealed. The power of the richest strata of peasants began to grow more rapidly than did agriculture as a whole. The policies of the Government actually tended to encourage these developments. Taxes increasingly fell upon the poorer peasant and the kulak was able, by monopolizing the supply of grain, to bring the poorest layers of peasant under his domination. Bukharin, the theoretician of the ruling group in the bureaucracy at this time, actually invited the peasant to ‘Get Rich’, which was, in effect, an invitation to the kulak to en- rich himself. Such dangers began to emerge with great clarity sions to the rich in the countryside involved yet further concessions. In 1925, after increasing demands from the kulak, the hiring of labour power and the leasing of land were legalized and sections of the ruling bureacracy, and in parti- cular Stalin, at this time hinted at the possibility of the denationalization of the land, which, as Lenin had insisted, was one of the cornerstones of the socialist base of the economy which had been -eStablished after 1917. Such moves greatly in- creased the power of the rich and reactionary peasants in the countryside and slowed up the rate of industrialization. _ What the economic policy of Stalin and his co- thinkers amounted to—during this period at least—was an acceptance of a rate of industriali- zation which was determined not by the industrial 97

[p037] Bukharino Argued that savings of the richer peasants would provide for increased investment.

[p038] sector of the economy but by the countryside. It was a policy which took no account of the in- ternational relationships of Soviet and world economy and the place of this economy in the world division of trade and labour. It was in the face of the rapidly mounting dangers represented by the emergence of the rich kulak as a member of a cohesive social force ranged against the Government, allied to the de- feat of the 1926 General Strike in Britain and the massacre of the Chinese Revolution in 1927 —itself the result of the direct policy imposed by Stalin on the Chinese Communists—that the bureaucracy began to take fright and made a dramatic turn in its industrial and agricultural policies after 1928. From accusing the Left Opposition of attempting to ‘smash the worker- peasant alliance’ of ‘underestimating the peasantry’ and of proposing to take a ‘leap in the dark’ the Stalin faction swung to a postion of ultra- leftism in relation to the peasantry. From a con- Servative, ultra-cautious policy which, in Bukha- rin’s famous phrase, involved the achievement of socialism on the ‘back of a peasant nag’, the official policy swung to one of rapid industriali- zation, With an overwhelming concentration placed upon heavy industry, and a policy in the country- side which involved forced collectivization and the liquidation of the kulak. In the late 1920s only one per cent of the land was collectivized, after’ five years over 20 per cent was to be organized in the collective farms. After presenting extremely conservative targets for industrial growth in the first draft of the Five Year Plan—targets which were sharply criticized by the Left Oppposition— the final version of the Plan involved the target of a growth rate of over 30 per cent per annum. Such a wild left swing in policy, carried through in an empirical and blind manner and with no preparation and adopted in response to the enor- mous contradictions resulting from the earlier right-wing mistakes itself met with disastrous consequences. The forced collectivization of agriculture, the ‘liquidation of the kulak’ and the breakneck de- velopment of heavy industry combined to pro- duce conditions of civil war inside the Soviet Union which almost brought about the collapse of the regime and with it the restoration of capi- talism. The revolt in the countryside against Stalin’s policies brought such damage to Soviet agriculture, in the form of crop burning, the des- truction of equipment and the slaughter of millions of animals that its effects are still felt today over 30 years later. 98 The struggle against these wild zigzags in economic policy and for a consistent policy in relation to agriculture and industry was carried out by the Left Opposition throughout the 1920s after Lenin’s untimely death in 1924. The lead- ing economist of the Left was of course Preo- brazhensky, who outlined his views on the build- ing of socialism in a backward country in his celebrated work The New Economics published in 1926, although many of its ideas had been worked out in the years before 1926. Preobra- zhensky was at this stage a member of the Left Opposition and close collaborator of Trotsky’s. As such his work is based (often implicitly, it is true) on the premise that the Soviet economy was part of the international economy and that in the long run it would not be possible to establish socialism in the Soviet Union on any viable basis in isolation from this world economy. On the other hand Preobrazhensky did address himself to the problems presented by a situation where, because of the temporary set-backs to the inter- national struggle of the working class, the Soviet Union found itself in an isolated position. Preobrazhensky started in his work from the fundamental proposition that the future stability of the Soviet economy could only be assured given the systematic development of industry. Preobrazhensky was concerned to show that industry could make only limited advances within the confines of the old techniques. NEP had in many ways brought forth all the possibilities for development inherent in the old industrial struc- ture and technique. Only the application of new techniques, requiring a vast increase in invest- ment, could lead to any systematic development of the productive forces. The Revolution had in fact increased the potential demand for industrial products on the part of the peasantry, who retained a considerably larger part of their product in the NEP period than under the Tsarist regime. A significant in- crease in industrial output would be required to satisfy these demands (and thus increased ex- change between the agrarian sector and the towns upon which their food supply depended). In addition there were the needs of the urban working class for consumer goods and the need to furnish the Soviet state with the military equipment to defend it against the threat © of attack from the West. In short, there had to be a big increase in investment in industry; the question was how could the resources be found to build the new factories, steel mills and power stations which these involved. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967

[p039] Preobrazhensky, along with the members of the Left Opposition, was convinced that these resources could not come from the industrial sector of the economy alone. Only given a trans- fer of resources from the countryside to the town could resources be marshalled and organized on a sufficient scale to accomplish the tasks out- lined above. In addition, without a correct orien- tation to the countryside a grave social and poli- tical crisis would develop. Preobrazhensky was in fact amongst the first to warn about the dangers which NEP involved of the fostering of a rich layer of peasants who would be hostile to the regime. Throughout the 1920s it was the Left Opposition who warned about the differentia- tion which was occurring in the countryside and urged a more vigorous policy of industrialization and collectivization. In response to this challenge Bukharin, the most extreme representative of the right and supporter of fundamental and perma- nent concessions to the peasant, was forced, at various times in the controversy, to argue that no differentiation was in fact occurring among the peasantry, that the term ‘kulak’ was losing all meaning and finally that the peasantry could, under certain circumstances, become the major revolutionary force in world history. In opposition to this policy of appeasement of the kulak Preobrazhensky argued for a policy which, through a conscious price policy, would effect a significant shift in resources from the countryside to the town. It was here that he in- troduced his celebrated Law of Socialist Accumu- lation. Just as the development of capitalism had involved the expropriation of the peasantry— a necessary process in the monopolization of the means of production as capital in the hands of the urban capitalist class—so the development of Soviet industry involved also a transfer of resources from agriculture to industry. He was quick to point out, however, that this process could in no way be carried out in the violent man- ner which had characterized the emergence of capitalism. In addition, given the rapid expansion of the whole social product which would be pos- sible under a system of planned economy, there was no reason to suppose that such a policy would mean an absolute decline in the standard of liv- ing in the countryside. Preobrazhensky was of the opinion that such a transfer of resources would best be effected through a system of price differentials which would keep up the price of industrial products at the expense of agricultural prices. This, from a political point of view, was less dangerous and would involve fewer adminis- ECONOMIC POLICIES OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION trative complications than would a direct tax upon the peasantry. Such an economic policy as that proposed by Preobrazhensky involved a sus- pension, or rather distortion, of the working of the law of value. Indeed he often spoke in terms of the ‘struggle’ between the law of value and the law of socialist accumulation. Whatever its particular weaknesses, which are not in any case our main concern at this stage, Preobrazhensky’s work did provide a consistent and positive statement of the problems involved. As he justifiably remarked about Bukharin, the case of the right wing was invariably cast in polemical form with no positive statement of position. Bukharin’s reply, which became increas- ingly frenzied and devoid of scientific considera- tion as the faction fight inside the Party inten- sified, consisted, in the main, of a series of asser- tions to the effect that growing prosperity of the peasantry was necessary to provide an enlarged market for goods from the towns and it was out of the savings of the richer peasants that funds would be provided for increased investment. At least he was wholly consistent in his position if not wholly logical. Even at the time of Stalin’s dramatic turn to the left in economic policy after 1928 he persisted in his right wing views and in the face of greater and greater dangers from the kulaks urged a policy of increased con- cessions. Stalin was in no way so consistent. From 1924 until the adoption of the First Five Year Plan he tended to avoid the theoretical discussions about the problems facing the economy. He confined himself either to a few sweeping and empty generalizations on the one hand or to comments Stalin Confined himself to a few sweeping and empty generaliza- tions, 99

[p040] Stalin Confined himself to a few and empty —_ generaliza- tions. ‘a! a

[p041] on isolated questions on the other. But there is no doubt where his political position lay. As he said at the 14th Party Congress in 1925 ‘We are, and we shall be, for Bukharin’. He was however astute enough to dissociate himself from Bukharin’s ‘Get Rich’ slogan. One final point must be stressed. The struggle between the ruling faction of the Party and the Left Opposition in the days after Lenin’s death on the question of industrialization was not of course a purely ‘economic’ debate. It was an aspect of the struggle against the degeneration of the revolution and for a restoration of the traditions of Bolshevism. The economic policy advocated by Stalin and his supporters was a reflection of their policy of ‘socialism in one country’, first advanced in 1924. Thus even when Stalin began to carry out a policy of industrialization and collectiviza- tion this in no way represented his ‘conversion’ to the political position of the Left Opposition. Many members of the Opposition did see the ‘turn’ to Stalin in this light, including Preobra- zhensky himself, who made his peace with Stalin, although soon afterwards he began to have grave doubts about the ruthless manner in which Stalin’s policy was being carried out. It was not merely a question that Stalin’s programme of industriali- zation was carried through at a breakneck speed which threatened the whole future of the revolu- tion. More important than this: as we have said, it was undertaken in a blind empirical manner in response to the growing capitalist threat at home and abroad. It was born out of a fear and panic at the consequences of the right-wing policy which had been persisted with in the years 1924-1928. By 1934/1935 this policy was to give way to an equally sharp turn to the right, again carried out empirically. The differences on economic questions were symptomatic of the difference on all political questions. Whereas Stalin and his followers increasingly saw the revolution as an isolated national event which had to be preserved at all costs (along with the privileges of an in- creasingly powerful bureaucracy) through a policy of peace with the forces of international capital- ism, the Left Opposition, following faithfully the traditions of Lenin and of Bolshevism, conceived of 1917 as only the opening of a series of un- interrupted revolutions against capitalism inter- nationally. Their attitude to the questions of the Soviet economy was part of this world perspec- tive. Thus while they paid specific attention to the problems of economic development in a back- ward, peasant dominated country in which, for example, Preobrazhensky was able to make some remarkable advances in the conceptions and techniques of political economy far beyond any- thing achieved either by his opponents or by bourgeois economists of the period—they con- tinued, as an Opposition, to see these as part of the whole imperialist epoch. The epoch was one dominated by war and revolution in which the decisive battles would be fought against capitalism _ in its main centres; Europe and North America. It is only from this point of view that the econo- mics of Trotsky or his co-thinkers have any meaning either for the 1920s or for today. Two pamphlets by Leon Trotsky Radio, Science, Technique and Society A speech delivered on March 1, 1926, as the inaugural address at the First All-Union Congress of the Society of Friends of Radio. A brilliant anticipation of the major advances of nuclear science and inter-planetary flight. Price: One shilling NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS LTD. 186a CLAPHAM HIGH STREET, Culture and Socialism and a Manifesto Art and Revolution An article compiled by the author from a talk he gave to a Moscow club on February 3, 1926, and a number of other addresses. The Manifesto, appearing in 1938 under the signatures of Andre Breton and Diego Rivera, was in fact drawn up in collabora- tion with Trotsky. Price: Two shillings and sixpence LONDON SW4 100 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967 i g : i i

[p042] BOTH BOURGEOIS AND STALINIST historians have falsified the history of the October Revolution. In the case of the Stalinists, this falsification is especially motivated by the political need to pro- tect the bureaucracy from all enquiries into its counter-revolutionary origins. But also involved is the genuine inability of those who betrayed the October Revolution to understand the revolu- tionary process and the methods of its leaders. Bourgeois historians, however sophisticated their manners of presentation, basically regard revolution as an unwarranted interference in the orderly progress of history, Clearly, such disasters as the revolutionary disruption of this smooth process can only be explained in terms of the plottings of agitators, inspired by a spirit of evil. On the other hand, the Stalinists begin from the absolute legitimacy of the Revolution, but idealize it through abstract, essentially bureau- cratic categories. The inner contradictions and uneveness of its development are smothered and finally lost in a crude attempt to force Bolshevism and the working class into the mould of the mythical ‘monolithic party’. As with their oppo- site numbers in the bourgeois camp, their idealist method obliterates the complexities and nuances in the dynamic relationship between the various layers of the masses, the revolutionary party and its leadership. The crudest expression in the bourgeois camp of these methods can be seen in the many recent biographies of Lenin, which alternate sections denigrating his ‘low cunning’ with proofs of his hopeless, even child-like, idealism. For the Stalinists, on the other hand, the Bolshevik Party was always monolithically correct. Recent tarnishing of Stalin’s halo has of necessity been accompanied by a still more religious ideali- zation of the role and political character of Lenin. The real meaning of October can only be grasped by those who fight for the continuation of the Russian Revolution. Only they can fully understand the possibility of intervention in history by the working class as a consciously organized force, acting independently of capital- ism and its bureaucratic agencies. A revolution brings forward in concentrated form all the contradictions in the old society. What was a subject class, exploited and oppressed, excluded from cultural and especially political life, is propelled forward towards the seizure of power. The rapid shifts and explosions in the mood of millions of people during a revolutionary period cannot be explained except in terms of objective forces and conflicts. ‘The swift change of mass views and moods in an epoch of revolution’, says Trotsky, ‘thus derive, not from the flexibility and mobility of man’s mind, but just from the opposite, from its conservatism. The chronic lag of ideas and rela- tions behind new objective conditions, right up to the moment when the latter crash over people in the form of a catastrophe, is what creates in a period of revolution that leaping movement of ideas and passions which seems to the police mind a mere result of the activities of “demagogues”’.’ (Preface to History of the Russian Revolution, p. 18.) When the objective needs of society clash on this scale with the established ideas in men’s heads, those who fight for the leadership of the revolutionary class concentrate in themselves all these contradictions. Marxist theory and organiza- tion are aimed at bringing these contradictions to the level of consciousness. Without the fight for this awareness, there can be no preparation for the inevitable shifts that take place inside the revolutionary class, and thus, no leadership to guide it to victory. Bolshevism was the fight to break through abstract, bourgeois, forms of thought on the basis of the revolutionary potential of the znter- national working class. This preparation for revo- lution could only take place in the overcoming of all the problems encountered in the building of a centralized, disciplined, revolutionary organi- zation, in the construction of a party which fights for the independent action of the working class. Only in the subordination of individual wills to this task can partial, short-term adaptations to the existing social order be exposed in contrast with a general, all-sided understanding of the world. 1917 demonstrated for all time that proletarian revolution could take place only with the develop- ment of this world outlook, in all its richness, based on the entire historical experience of the 101

[p043] —— - experience. international working class. Clearly, says Lenin, ‘absolute centralization and the strict discipline of the proletariat are the fundamental conditions for victory over the bourgeoisie. . But far from enough thought has been given to the question as to what it means and under what conditions it is possible. Russia achieved Marxism, the only correct revolutionary theory, virtually through suffering, by half a century of unprecedented torment and sacrifice, of un- precedented heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study, testing in practice, disappoint- ments, checking and comparison with European ’ (Lenin, Left Wing Communism.) By painting over or personalizing the conflicts within the Bolshevik Party during as well as before 1917, idealist historians evade all the real questions posed by the October Revolution. What the Marxist. must analyse as objective, historical contradictions are presented purely as the product of subjective error or the accidents of individual psychology. In the period between February and the end of October, the Bolshevik Party was convulsed by a series of crises within its leadership. Lenin deli- berately provoked the sharpest possible struggle within the Party precisely in order to bring to the surface all the Social-Democratic illusions which stood between the Bolshevik Party and the over- throw of Russian capitalism. Lenin’s offensive against the right wing of the Party, led in March by Kamenev, Stalin and Muranov from the editorial board of Pravda, had deeper implications than a struggle for a strategic turn within the Russian Revolution. Un- like practically all the leading Bolsheviks, not to speak of the left wing in the old International, Lenin had from 1914 based his entire political thinking on the neccesity of building a new, com- munist international. Lenin directed his fire in this first period of his return from exile, not only against leading Bolsheviks who worked for a compromise with the Provisional Government, but also against any trend towards unity with the Zimmerwaldist ‘Centre’. The Zimmerwald swamp of pacifism and unpricipled manoeuvres was seen by many ‘Old Bolsheviks’ as an inviting road back to the womb of the Second International. Lenin saw more clearly than anyone else in April 1917 that the one-sided, unthinking assimi- lation of certain tactical turns and organizational forms from the past history of the Bolshevik faction had become a receptacle for alien class forces within the Party. These alien pressures were forced all the way to the surface only when 102 the Party was faced with the necessity of making bold changes in its strategy. ‘Old Bolshevism’, in ~ this context, was the vehicle for all the conser- vatism and inertia within the class and the Party, given the finished form of slavish adherence to past, and often outmoded, formulae and slogans. Kamenev’s insistence on limiting the Party to agitation for the ‘democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasantry’, advocated since 1905 by Bolshevism, epitomized this backward-looking tendency within the Party that swamped the leading cadres in early 1917. In this respect, Lenin moved towards the programmatic position of Trotsky and the ‘Permanent Revolution’ and against the entire leadership of his own party, with all its illusions in the ‘fortifying’ role of the Provisional Government and scepticism concern- ing the ripeness of Russia for socialist revolution. Lenin was able to project this new perspective for the Party only by digging down beneath the democratic illusions of the masses to the realities of the imperialist war—a war that for the Russian workers and peasants could be ended only by the overthrow of that same Provisional Government in which the vast majority of them still believed. Kameney and his supporters, though employing Bolshevik terminology of former periods, reflected a petty-bourgeois pressure upon the working class. Lenin relentlessly laid bare the political, class content of their adherence to the formulae of 1905. He showed that it involved nothing less than capitulation to Menshevism in Russia, and internationally, to Zimmerwald and thence to the Kautskyite ‘Centre’. Lenin’s political audacity lay in his ability to launch attacks on this theoretical inertia within the Party in line with organic developments within the working class and its allies. But, though on many occasions threatening to ‘go to the sailors’, Lenin could never simply by-pass the Party and its leading cadres. With all their weaknesses, the Bolshevik leaders embodied the priceless political experience of a whole epoch of international class struggle. By unflinchingly battling aganst every tendency to conservatism, that experience became harnessed to the further development of the Party, the training of new generations of fighters and the penetration of deeper layers of the masses. Stalinist historians present Lenin’s campaign for the ‘April Theses’ as being victorious within - a few weeks of his return. In reality, the change of front by many of the party leaders around the axis of ‘All power to the Soviets’ was little more ‘than an adaptation to the authority of Lenin with- FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967

[p044] V. I. Lenin delivers his ‘April Theses’ to the Soviets in the Party, combined with the deepening radi- calization of the masses, after the imperialist de- signs of the Provisional Government were re- vealed. Adjusting to this shift to the left, ‘Old Bolshevism’ still shied away from the actual task of preparing the overthrow of the Provisional Government. While the Soviets remained under the control of the Menshevik and Social-Revolu- tionary Compromisers, the most conservative of Bolsheviks could agitate for these new organs of workers’ rule to take the whole power from the Provisional Government, confident that no such transfer of power could possibly take place. For Lenin, however, the content and not the form of Soviet power was decisive. Only Soviets with a Bolshevik majority could be real organs of the dictatorship of the working class. Soviets dominated by the right wing served only as a means of transferring the power back to the old ruling class. The role of the Compromisers was to provide the ruling classes with the necessary breathing space to regroup their shattered forces and prepare for the complete destruction of the Soviets, and, with them, dual power. Seizing once again on the form of this slogan, ‘Old Bolshevism’ re-asserted itself in a new guise of orthodoxy. The crisis provoked by the July Days, in which the balance of ‘dual power’ established in the first days of the Revolution was shifted sharply to the right by clashes in Petrograd between workers and sailors and de- tachments of the extreme right, proved that a new relationship between the masses and the right