by Peter Jeffries

[p015] by Peter Jeffries materials help to cheapen the elements of constant capital and slow up the tendency for the organic composition of capital to rise, thereby helping to stabilize the rate of profit.3 We can usefully look at the problems now being faced by Imperialism if we examine these three aspects of. the relationship—as usually seen in the 3. For a detailed exposition of Marx’s concept of the falling rate of profit see Joseph Gillman The Falling Rate of Profit, Denis Dobson 1957. For a simple analysis see The Newsletter, Vol. 6, No. 255, June 30, 1962. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE It will be useful to start with a brief analysis of some of the developments now taking place in the metropolitan countries. Generally speaking it is possible to discern a breaking down of the traditional relationships between the advanced and under- developed parts of the world economy as the metropolitan countries of Western Europe and North America become more self-sufficient in the production of certain foodstuffs and raw materials. Not only does Imperialism bring unevenness of ‘development on a world scale; this is also true if one considers the metropolitan countries alone. In Britain, for example, the contrast is between motor cars, chemicals, synthetic fibres, rubber and oil- -refining on the one hand, and railways, shipbuilding, coalmining and textiles on the other. Of special concern to us is the rapid development of synthetic fibres and rubber in North America and Western Europe. The growth of these industries is now beginning to undermine the position of the under- developed countries as suppliers of the equivalent raw materials to the imperialist countries. But firstly we should examine the position of agriculture, where it is perhaps easier to see the processes which are at work. In Western Europe, and to a lesser extent in North America, agriculture has remained a relatively backward sector of these highly industrialized economies—‘backward’ in the sense that the ratio of capital to labour has been comparatively low. But the increasing intrusion of capital into this sector has steadily raised production and productivity. (The two world wars, during which the European economies were cut off from their traditional suppliers, helped to speed up these past—between the developed and backward parts of the world economy. Naturally, they are inter- connected but the division of the material along these lines makes for easier handling. Throughout the discussion it is very important to keep in mind the general decline of Imperialism as a world system. The growth of the Soviet economy to a position where it can now challenge American imperialism in many fields, the spread of the revolution to China and Eastern Europe, and finally the continuing struggles of the workers and peasants in the back- ward countries, have all weakened capitalism con- siderably since 1916. ADVANCED ECONOMIES developments.) At the same time, consumption has failed to keep pace with these increases. Con- sequently, not only are the imports of food into the advanced countries being reduced but these countries are also releasing their growing surpluses on to the world market; this is forcing down the price of many commodities and intensifying the problems of the countries of Africa and Asia. In the United States, for example, crop production has risen by about 20 per cent in the last decade, and could rise by a further 25 per cent in the next five years. During the 1950s, however, American food consumption per head has been virtually static.4 This trend is true not only of America, but also of Western Europe. Since 1938-39, production of grain in this area has risen by over 15 million tons from about 64 million tons, while the figures for a similar period in the United States show a rise from just over 100 million tons to nearly 160 million tons.5 Commenting upon this our ‘top newspaper’ has pointed to the political risks involved in the situation. The advanced countries are beginning to produce surpluses in an increasingly wide range of commo- dities; this by ‘depressing prices (will) reduce the capacity of the underdeveloped countries to buy food which they need . . . This picture recalls the “hunger amid plenty” which had disastrous effects 4. The Times, June 3, 1962, reporting a speech by President Kennedy. 5. Grain Crops. A review published by HMSO, 1959. In the same period American exports of wheat increased more than fivefold to a figure of nearly 13 million tons in 1957,

[p016] 94 on men’s minds and then on political events in the thirties.6 Not only has the danger to Imperialism implicit in this situation been grasped, but The Times has correctly analyzed the position: ‘Countries with large capital resources are applying technology to agriculture with startlingly successful results... the North American farmer pours out more food- stuffs (grain and dairy produce) than can be con- sumed at home, sold abroad or even given away.” President Kennedy has realized that, despite the glaring world food shortage, American exports will be unable to remedy the situation, not because the farmers cannot raise the production to the required levels, but for other reasons. Income in the backward countries is too low, and, in any case, even if the backward countries had the money to buy food, transport facilities there are not sufficiently developed to handle and distribute it. Kennedy’s ‘solution’—tailoring demand to supply, compensating farmers for land not used, etc., exposes in a cruel way the contradictions which Imperialism suffers on a world scale, contradictions which condemn millions in Africa, Asia and’ Latin America to under- nourishment and starvation.’ The metropolitan countries are relying less and less upon the backward areas to supply them with certain foodstuffs; while this trend must not be exaggerated, the continuing application of science and technology to agriculture will increasingly force us to take these developments into account. The limited amounts of capital which are being applied to agriculture in the underdeveloped world will raise production even more and further worsen the economic plight of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. But if capital is finding it less advantageous to exploit the agricultural resources of the backward areas this is increasingly the case with regard to certain raw materials. Take the case of rubber, 6. The Times, May 3, 1962. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. Here the annual world deficit is shown as follows: 3,000m. Ibs. 350m. lbs. 7,000m. Ibs. 1,000m. Ibs. of non-fat dry milk of dry beans. of vegetable oil of wheat. LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 which is perhaps the best illustration of the forces at work; apart from the present US stockpiles of rubber which Senator Symington is demanding be released onto the world market, the threat which overhangs the natural rubber market is the perennial ~ competition from synthetics. ‘Already this year there have been reports, that the rate of substitution of synthetic for natural rubber has accelerated over that in 1961. In Europe especially, it is expected that synthetic still has many gains to make at the expense of its natural rival. Whereas synthetic now has over a two-thirds share of the North American tyre market, its share in the United Kingdom, France and Western Germany is about a half and in Italy two-fifths.’? This trend away from natural rubber will have severe repercussions on such countries as Malaya and Indonesia, both of whom derive about half their earnings from the export of rubber. Increased production of rubber will depress world prices even more and still further undermine the external position of these countries.!0 Similar developments appear to be taking place in the case of man-made fibres. Since 1954 the consumption of these fibres has risen at four times the pace of the consumption of the natural fibres, wool and cotton.!! In the first quarter of this year (1962) production of synthetic fibres in Western Europe, the United States and Japan (which together account for nearly 80 per cent of total production) had risen by about 14 per cent compared with a similar period two years ago.!2 Cotton is now more expensive than rayon staple and investment is proceeding at such a pace, especially in synthetic fibres, that prices are almost certain to be reduced still further.13 9. The Financial Times, May 7, 1962. 10. ‘Earnings from natural rubber will almost certainly be reduced below the 1960 level. . . . Given the con- siderable increase in the capacity to produce synthetic rubber, it seems unlikely that the price of rubber will move far out of line with that of synthetic in 1961. World Economic Survey 1960, p. 212. 11.- The Financial Times, April 30, 1962. 12. The Guardian, May 29, 1962. 13. The Financial Times, May 3, 1962. MARKETS AND CAPITAL EXPORTS TO THE UNDERDEVELOPED WORLD The usefulness of the backward areas of the world as markets for the excess commodities of the advanced countries is being gradually eroded because of the widespread and growing poverty which exists in these areas. The general pattern since 1945 has been one of boom and advance in the metropolitan countries and stagnation and decline over large parts of Africa, Asia and South America. The outstanding feature of these areas is their poverty and hence comparative uselessness as markets. As one example,

[p017] NEW TRENDS IN IMPERIALISM in the case of Ghana, enjoying the highest average level of income of any African state south of the Sahara (with the exception of South Africa), per capita income is only about £45 per annum. In many African states the figure is as low as £15-20 per annum.'4 In any case a per capita figure may be misleading: in India, parts of Africa and South America, because of the high degree of inequality which prevails, the majority of the population con- stitute only a very limited market for the goods of the metropolitan countries. The fact that richer people tend to save a greater proportion of their income than do poorer people further restricts the potential market in many parts of the backward world and heightens the unevenness of capitalist development. Any tendency towards greater in- equality in the distribution of income will only intensify the problem of exports for the imperialists. But the poverty of Africa and Asia is also reducing their value as fields for the investment of surplus capital. Since Imperialism was written one feature of the development of capitalism has been the growth in the complexity of what economists usually call the ‘infrastructure’ upon which any advanced economy has to be based. Such an infrastructure in the 1960s consists of an adequate transport system, a literate, skilled, disciplined, labour force as well as a number of scientists and technologists. These increasingly necessary requirements are almost wholly lacking in most of the poor areas of the world. To give a few examples from Africa: the transport system is ~ completely inadequate to meet the needs of the 20th century—on the whole the railways are single track and do not extend far into the interior; in addition most Africans are illiterate and few of the States have 2 per cent of their children at school; water shortage is a problem over perhaps two-thirds of Africa; many of the soils are poor and there is a serious lack of fuel, especially coal. Because of widespread poverty, disease and under-nourishment are commonplace. This results in an_ inefficient labour force: ‘such illnesses limit Africa’s oppor- tunities for economic growth by vastly reducing the efficiency of African manpower.”!5 To remedy this situation is a costly business from’ the point of view of the imperialists: to lay the basis for large-scale investments in these areas is vital, but promises no immediate return. There is little profit to be made in building roads, schools, hospitals and so on, but, until this is done, in this period of modern technology no big profitable investments are possible. 14. For list of per capita incomes throughout the world see United Nations Statistical Papers, Series E, No. 14, quoted in Labour Review, Vol. 6, No. 2. 15. Shirley Williams, ‘How Rich is Africa?’ in The Twentieth Century, Vol. 165, No. 986, April 1959. 95 As technology and industry become more complex in the metropolitan countries this problem will only grow more acute; the unevenness of development upon a world scale will become more and more pronounced. ‘In short, most of Africa still lacks the basic economic “infrastructure”, as it is called, on which profitable investments depend. Business- men who want to establish industries or mines in Africa have to provide their own power, build their own access roads, train their own labour and import their own managers and technical staff from over- seas. 16 This is not meant to imply that the imperialists are deserting the underdeveloped areas of the globe. What is happening is that investments are being more and more concentrated into petroleum and mining; this means that the majority of capital exports are going to those parts of the world rich in oil, tin, copper, gold, etc. More and more the capitalists in the metropolitan countries are openly raping and plundering Africa, Asia and Latin America. Despite President Kennedy’s attempt to create a new image of Imperialism, this is the reality, and all pretence at balanced development for these areas has vanished. Fields of investment hitherto profitable are being abandoned and new outlets for capital sought: “In recent years, most of it (private foreign invest- ment)—about 70%—has been going into petroleum. Very little investment is occurring outside the oil- bearing countries.’17 “In certain mineral exporting countries, Rhodesia and Nyasaland and Venezuela, for example, large amounts have been invested by foreigners in the production of copper and petroleum. In contrast, countries which export chiefly textile fibres and certain foods have been particularly unattractive to private investors.’18 In the case of Africa, over half the total invest- ments in the period 1945-1949 has been concentrated 16. Ibid., p. 404. (The United Nations has summed up the position: ‘Generally foreign private investors seek outlets for their funds in areas where certain basic facilities—such as transport, communications and banking—are already fairly well developed. Adequate facilities of this kind are usually available only in countries which have reached a higher stage of economic development and where the level of per capita income is generally higher. Moreover, with a given population, a higher per capita income provides a larger domestic market which offers an additional impetus for the inflow of foreign capital . . . the low level of per capita income seems to have been one of the deterrents to such inflows in countries such as India and Pakistan” World Economic Survey, United Nations 1960, p. 66.) 17. Measures for the Development of Under- developed Countries, United Nations, pp. 80-81. - 18. World Economic Survey 1960, p. 63.

[p018] 96 in South Africa, the Central African Federation and the Belgian Congo, each of them rich in gold or copper.!9 Figures for the United States are even more revealing. The outflow of capital invested in petroleum rose by over 300 per cent in the years 1955-57; in mining and smelting the increase was 19. The Twentieth Century, op. cit. LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 over 200 per cent, whereas the figure for the outflow of capital as a whole rose by about 120 per cent. In 1957, capital investments in mining and petroleum accounted for something like five-sevenths of total capital outflow.2° 20. The Flow of International Private Capital 1956- 58, United Nations. CHANGING DIRECTION OF CAPITAL INVESTMENTS The developments related above suggest a changed emphasis in the flow of international capital which to some extent modifies the traditional Marxist view of Imperialism. Increasingly the metropolitan countries are investing in each others’ economies in the face of barriers to investment in the backward countries. What I want to do is to give some indication of this change, first in general terms and, by way of convenient illustration, from the recent experience of British Imperialism. Of particular interest to us at this point is the position of those areas of the world which, while they cannot be considered ‘underdeveloped’ in the sense of comparability to Africa and Asia, neverthe- less have not reached the high levels of development achieved by American, German, French or British capitalism. If, as a rough guide, we can take the per capita income as a measure of the development of an economy, this ‘middle’ range, as it were, would include Ireland, Austria, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Israel, etc. As fields for the investment of capital these countries have certain advantages which are not found in the very backward areas. In the first place, they often have a reasonably developed ‘infra- structure’ which, as we tried to show above, is completely lacking in most parts of Africa and Asia. Road and rail networks are in many cases more suited to the needs of 20th century transportation, educational facilities are usually more extensive, and the population more ready to accept the discipline required of a modern labour force. In the second place, because the level of per capita income in these countries is higher than in most places in Africa and Asia, there is a richer domestic market to be exploited. On the other hand, countries such as Italy and Portugal do not suffer the ‘disadvantages’ of the very highly developed economies; in particular, wage rates tend to be lower and this offers capital the possibility of a higher rate of return. Again it may be too early to make any definite predictions, but there are some indications that countries such as Italy and Spain are proving a greater attraction to foreign private investment.2! 21.. Ibid. To give an example ‘ United States invest- United States capital has been flowing into Italy at a fast pace and trade with and between Spain, the United States and Great Britain has increased con-- siderably in recent years. In the case of Spain, the government has been trying to modernize the economy in preparation for full entry into. the Common Market. Much government investment in Spain has been channelled into the provision of an adequate ‘infrastructure’ as a basis for the importation of private capital; it is expected that assistance will come from the World Bank to. speed up this process.22 We must not, of course, fall into the trap of 22. It is interesting to see the role which the World Bank is playing in opening up these backward areas of Europe for imperialist investments. For Spain see Board of Trade Journal, Vol. 182, No. 3402, June 1, 1962. Aid to Greece and Turkey is flowing through the World Bank and also the Organisation for European Combined Development. See The Financial Times, July 9, 1962. a RR a pe ments in Italy have increased from $80m. in 1952 to $233m. in 1957. Total foreign investments in Italy .. . amounted to 400 billion lire in the period 1948-56 and more than half of this amount corresponds to invest- ments made in the last 3 years . . . for the most part, recent foreign direct investment in Italy has been in the southern, less developed, part of the country’. (My emphasis—P.J.) It is perhaps of some significance that The Financial Times (March 30, 1962), in reporting the launching of a German Economic Development Corporation, designed to assist small and medium-sized German firms to go in‘o business in the developing countries, notes that ‘the Corporation will be in a position to operate in the developing countries as defined by the Organisation for European Combined Development. That means that European countries such as Greece and Spain will be included besides the needy countries overseas’. - The Times, commenting upon ‘the growing inter- nationalism of investment’? (March 2, 1962), states (May 7, 1962), ‘of the countries of Western Europe the stock market regards Spain, Belgium and Italy as offering the best opportunities at the moment... . Spanish industry has been making good headway and the introduction of foreign capital is being welcomed. . . . Italian production rose last year by 15% and there is considerable scope for further development’.

[p019] NEW TRENDS IN IMPERIALISM separating political from economic considerations; one of the prime reasons for the influx of United States capital into France and Italy after 1945 was an attempt to achieve some degree of political stability in these countries and ward off the threat of the advance of communism. But apart from these very important considerations I think it is possible to detect some more directly ‘economic’ factors which are beginning to operate in the world economy and which are making these countries more attractive to foreign investments. The flow of capital between the very highly developed European economies of France, Western Germany and Great Britain has also been growing in importance. And expert opinion believes that this trend will develop in the 1960s.23 Investments are beginning to flow around Europe to such an extent that giant Continental Investment Trusts are appear- ing which spread their investments throughout the European Economy.?4 This increase in European investment is also reflected in increased European trade; in the two years prior to 1960 trade between the European Economic Community countries increased by about 50 per cent while total exports from this area rose by only 30 per cent.25 United States investment in Europe has also been growing rapidly and this is of key importance. Numerous firms organized upon an international basis now own plants and firms throughout Europe. _They operate in the field of motors, electrical and mechanical engineering, pharmaceutics and food processing. Many of these plants are owned partly or wholly by American concerns. Between 1952 and 1957 United States direct investment in Western Germany, France and the United Kingdom rose by almost 100 per cent and by 1957 represented almost 20 per cent of American foreign investment.26 Since that date the United States has taken the lead 23. ‘No estimate can be made of the total intra- European direct investment. All the major capital exporting countries—Belgium, France, Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—are known to have substantial invest- ments in each other and elsewhere in Europe. . . . such investment is likely to absorb a considerable proportion of the region’s available resources in the near future . . . the creation of the European Common Market . . is also stimulating the inflow of entrepreneurial capital from the United States, as United States manufacturers see an advantage in establishing production facilities within the Common Market. The Flow of Inter- national Private Capital 1956-58, United Nations. 24. The Times, May 7, 1962, gives details of a recent example. 25. Journal of Industrial Economics, Vol. 10, No. 1, November 1961. 26. The Flow of. International Private Capital 1956-58, United Nations. 97 throughout Europe in take-over bids and mergers.27 Also significant is the fact that the net outflow of long-term capital from the United States to the high income countries in the years 1953-58 was about three times as high as that going to the low income countries in the same period—if Latin America is excluded, where investment in the development of petroleum has been heavy. Even if this area is included the low income countries still received less than did the richer areas of the world.28 We can now illustrate some of these develop- ments from the experience of British Imperialism. Looking only at the Sterling Area first: the flow of capital has definitely been to the more highly developed countries of the area and *prin- cipally (to) Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, leaving a minor portion for India, Pakistan and Ceylon, the newly independent countries of Africa and the remaining colonial territories.29 Capital investment in Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa has been especially heavy, reflecting the heavy concentration upon gold and copper which parallels American. developments. In the second place, Asia has been virtually neglected; this because of the lack of easily exploitable minerals and the low levels of income which provide little or no market for British exporters. ‘It is apparent there- fore that the post-war flow of capital has not in the main been to those countries which urgently need development resources. On the contrary, the trend has been perverse to the extent that available supplies of capital have gone mainly to the countries which have already attained a high degree of develop- ment.’30 While the Sterling Area still retains great signific- ance as an outlet for British capital3! the importance of Europe has also been growing. -In 1958 British firms invested £14 million in Western Europe, in 27. Journal of Industrial Economics, Op. cit. 28. The Flow of International Private Capital 1956- 58, United Nations. 29. The Times, May 21, 1962. In the same article it is noted, ‘It has long been observed that countries already fairly well established on the path of economic development are generally of greater attraction to private foreign capital than those whose economic advance is only just commencing.’ 30. A. R. Conan Capital Imports Countries, 1960, p. 37. 31. In 1960, 63% of total direct investments of United Kingdom Companies was directed to the Sterling Area. Within this group Australia has been gaining rapidly in importance. Whereas in 1958 only £19m. was invested by the Companies in this country by 1960 this figure had risen to £57m. Board of Trade Journal, Vol. 182, No. 3393, (N.B., Investments in oil and insuranee are not included, the data being unobtainable.) into S terling

[p020] 98 1959 £20 million and in 1961 £25 million. Of this £25 million about 80 per cent was invested in the countries of the European Economic Community whereas this area took only 60 per cent of European investment in 1958; the countries growing most rapidly as fields for British investment were Italy and France.22 Investments in Canada and the United States totalled £43 million in 1960, not far short of twice the amount invested in Europe during that year. About £15 million of British capital was invested in Latin America, the largest slice going to Argentina with one of the highest per capita incomes of the region. British experience also conformed to the trends noted above in that less emphasis was placed upon investment in agriculture; in 1958 this absorbed about 10 per cent of British Imperialism’s direct foreign investment; in 1959 this fell to 6 per cent and in 1960 to 5 per cent. What is the pattern of foreign investment in Britain? 32. Ibid., p. 675; again oil and insurance are excluded. Earnings from investments in France, for example, rose from £0.8m. in 1958 to over £2m. in 1960. LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 In 1961 capital exports from Britain amounted to about £211 million, whereas capital imports stood at £225 million. Britain has, of course, traditionally been a net exporter of capital and this ‘new pheno- menon’ of 1961 was due mainly to ‘an astonishing net inflow of private capital of £75 million’. As the Financial Times put it: ‘The tendency for investment to become international is likely to continue (especi- ally if we join the European Economic Community and liberalize exchange controls) and there is much to be said for financing part of our investment abroad out of foreign investments in this country.23 To some extent the inflow of capital was unduly swollen by the Ford deal which involved about £130 million, but, as leading experts noted, recent years have invariably seen some ‘special’ inflow of capital. Where did the capital invested in Britain come from? Breaking down the 1960 figures, of the total of £132 million the lion’s share came from the United States (£85 million), with sizable contributions from Canada (£18 million) and Western Europe (£16 million). 33. The Financial Times, March 29, 1962. CONCLUSIONS What is the significance of the processes which I have tried to describe? Basically they signify the continuing decline of Imperialism since 1916. The difficulties increasingly experienced in the export of capital to the backward areas of the world are not to be thought of as an isolated phenomenon; they are linked essentially to the rapid advance of industry and technology in the metropolitan countries and particularly to their growing self-sufficiency in certain foodstuffs and raw materials. As industry advances in Western Europe and America, so will the uneven- ness of development upon a world scale become more pronounced. In these conditions, investment in the increasingly impoverished two-thirds of the world will become more difficult. It will become less and less possible to install advanced and highly complex plant in an Africa and Asia growing more and more unsuited, both economically and culturally, to receive it on the expanding scale required. While it is true that investment goes on apace in these areas in the fields of mineral extraction and petroleum, it would be wrong to look upon this as a permanent “escape route’ for Imperialism. Firstly, this ignores the fact that such a rapid expansion in the production of these commodities must sooner or later end in a crisis of over-production and falling prices—indeed this is currently happening in the case of oil. The development of Soviet production—oil is again a good example-—is bound to worsen the situation. In the second place, the development of mining and oil production in these backward areas must speed up the growth of a concentrated industrial working class. Given a correct leadership this can provide a real force in the struggle against Imperialism throughout Africa and Asia. But we must not look upon these questions in isolation. Capitalism is now entering a period when it is generally finding it more difficult to extract and realize surplus value on the mecessary scale, a difficulty which, in this particular context, shows itself in a tendency for the rate of profit upon invested capital to decline. The phenomenon of growing barriers to investment in the backward areas of the world is only one of the totality of inter- connected factors which is now producing this difficulty. It is necessary to understand fully the place which the concept of the falling rate of profit has in the structure of political economy. Above all this resolves itself into a question of method.34 Marx was trying to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society; in doing this he was obviously unable to deal with the whole complex of forces operating in capitalist economy. On the basis of his experience and judgment he had to abstract certain of the features which he thought were of key importance and construct a ‘model’ of the essential 34. For a discussion of this see Tom Kemp in Labour Review, op. cit.

[p021] NEW TRENDS IN IMPERIALISM workings of the capitalist system on the basis of these features. It would therefore be a mistake to try to show that the rate of profit had, or had not, fallen with the development of capitalism and on this basis either prove or refute Marx’s basic analysis. Certain factors, which in a simplified model may be taken as ‘given’, may be powerful enough to counter- act or even reverse the operations of any law. Abstraction is, of course, the key tool of the social scientist but we must be careful to understand exactly what abstract models represent and what valid con- clusions we may derive from them. Marx was fully aware of this and was quick to show that there were powerful counteracting forces at work in the system which operated alongside and as part of those pressures producing a general and long-term tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Summing up the discussion on this point, Marx notes: “We have thus seen in a general way that the same influences which produce a tendency in the general rate of profit to fall, also call forth counter-effects, which hamper, retard, and partly paralyse this fall. The latter do not do away with the law, but impair its effect... . Thus the law acts only as a tendency. And it is only under certain circumstances and after long periods that its effects become strikingly pronounced.’35 (My emphasis—P.J.) What we therefore have to discuss are the specific factors which are now operating in the capitalist countries which currently make the law ‘operative’, as it were. This can perhaps be most conveniently discussed by an examination of some of the counter- acting tendencies which have been at work since 1945, the combined power of which would now appear to be ebbing. At the basis of the law of the falling rate of profit was the trend which Marx noted for the value of constant capital (machinery, tools, raw materials and SO on) to rise in relation to variable capital (the wage bill of productive labourers). Since 1945, there is no doubt that in many sectors of the economy the organic composition of capital has risen sharply— investment has proceeded at a rapid pace in motors, steel, engineering, chemicals, oil, synthetic fibres and so on. This Marx termed a rise in the organic com- position of capital (0.c.c.). Other things being equal, with a rising o.c.c. the rate of profit must fall.36 But, 35. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, p. 233. F.L.P.H. edition. 36. The rate of profit is the relation of the amount of profit realized to a given amount of capital invested. Thus if C represents the total capital and S represents the surplus value (or unpaid labour time) then the rate of profit is shown by the formula S/C = pl (rate of profit). Then Marx divides capital. up into constant capital (c) and variable capital (v). The rate of profit 1S now given by pl = S/(c + v). If a part of the denominator (c) is increased while § remains unchanged, then p! must fall. This, in essence, is the ‘law’ of the falling rate of profit. 99 of course, ‘other things are not equal’; the law does not operate in a vacuum, in other words. What are the main counteracting tendencies which have until recently been in operation in the world economy? Only a few elementary things can be said in the space available.37 In the first place, Marx assumed, for analytical purposes, that the rate of exploitation (that is, the ratio of the ‘unpaid’ portion of the day to the ‘paid’ portion) would remain constant over time. The rapid advance of productive techniques (especially in that sphere loosely defined as ‘automation’) has. raised the productivity of labour enormously and with it the rate of exploitation. Without empirical investigation it is difficult to be more definite but the strong possibility is, to say the least, that the increase in the rate of exploitation has counter-balanced the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. In the second place, in several European countries wages have been held down because of the existence of a considerable reserve army of labour. To use Marx’s phrase, there has been ‘relative over- population’ in the countries such as Western Germany, Italy and France. The rapid accumulation of capital which was made possible in these countries (and especially in Western Germany) had reper- cussions throughout the capitalist world economy and acted as a strong force for expansion. Finally, the period since 1940 has seen a big increase of State intervention in the economies of certain capitalist countries—notably in Britain. The State has taken both a greater interest in the control of direct investment—in Britain, for example, in the case of the nationalized industries, which account for roughly 20 per cent of the economy—and also in more general control via manipulation of credit and monetary institutions, There is little doubt that this has brought a greater degree of economic and social stability to the system and has been one factor contributing to the avoidance of any major recession. The fact that nationalization in this country also took place in the backward sector of the economy, with high rates of compensation being paid, meant that capital was released for more lucrative openings. Some of these stabilizing factors are now, however, beginning to turn into their opposites. The dis- appearance of unemployment in countries such as Germany means that wages in several European countries are now beginning to rise. Secondly, while nationalization did stabilize the system in some countries after 1945 this also allowed accumulation to proceed at a faster pace. This meant a rapidly rising organic composition of capital which, in the period we are now entering, means a downward pressure upon the rate of profit. It is into this general pattern that we must fit the 37. For a more detailed treatment of all these questions see Tom Kemp, op. cit.

[p022] 100 growing barriers to investment in the backward countries. One of the main counteracting forces operating against the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is, of course, the ability of the metropolitan countries to exploit and export capital to the under- developed areas of the world, with the results which we outlined at the beginning of this article. When one grasps the relationships of the processes des- cribed in some detail above to those briefly mentioned in this concluding section, it is possible to obtain a clearer picture of the nature of the crisis which is now facing the system on a world scale and the steps which its rulers are taking to avert it. By moving into the less well developed areas of the advanced world (Spain, Ireland, Greece, Turkey, Southern Italy and so on) the capitalists hope to stave off their problems. These areas have the advantages compared to Asia and Africa which we noted above—a better transport system, a more highly skilled working class, better educational facilities, a bigger domestic market to be exploited and so on. On the other hand they have the advantage—from the point of view of the imperialists —of lower wages, higher rates of unemployment and weaker traditions of trade unionism and working class organization.38 This, of course, is where the Common Market fits into the picture. Capital is now demanding greater mobility in the face of barriers to its expansion—this the Common Market will give to it. Firms will now be able to roam Europe looking for pockets of unemployment and cheap labour; we can expect to see whole sections of the economies of Britain, America, Western Germany, France and so on take legs and walk to these backward areas of Europe. The lead in all these developments is taken by the American ruling class—the section of world finance 38. A series of recent articles in The Guardian (especially June 15, 1962), significantly called Profitless Prosperity—the outlook for the sixties, notes the basic- ally similar problems being faced by the rulers of Germany, America, Great Britain, Switzerland and Holland. The author goes on to point out that France and Italy are to an extent different. Companies operating in these countries are ‘the odds on favourites for profit growth’. There are ‘near ideal conditions for industrialisation. . a reserve pool of labour in agriculture (and) a low initial level of productivity’. LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 capital with most at stake. It is clear that they have been the driving force behind the Common Market, and American capital has flowed into Europe in recent years at a rapid pace. From the point of view of United States Imperialism wages in Europe are generally lower than at home and there is a large and rich market to be exploited. A recent article in The Financial Times?9 entitled ‘America’s Grand Design for Europe’ (!) clearly shows this: the aim has been ‘a strong political partnership between Europe and the United States more closely knit than ever before and more effective than before in com- bating the threat of communism’. It is also clear where the pressure for Britain’s entry into the Euro- pean Economic Community came from: ‘it remains true that America is determined that Commonwealth objections should not interfere with the development of the Atlantic Community.’ Two tasks still remain unfinished. It is necessary to think out very carefully the political implications of what has been discussed here. Firstly, the strategy to be adopted by the revolutionary movement in backward countries would seem to be involved. If the imperialists are deserting many of the backward areas, leaving them in poverty and misery, all talk of the ‘two stage’ revolution must become more patently sheer nonsense. There can be no hope of natural and organic transition to capitalism and then on to socialism. Again, with the search for capital outlets which is now developing throughout Europe, all theories which claim that the centre of the world revolution has passed to the colonial areas will be left way behind by events. Europe and the US will be the stage of the big mass struggles which will settle the fate of humanity—the upsurges in Germany, Britain and Spain are a sure if early sign of this. Secondly, the role of the Soviet and Chinese economies has been ignored; given their growing potential to provide exportable surpluses—the case of oil has been briefly touched upon above—one would expect this to intensify the crisis of imperialism ——a crisis which must in turn react back upon the countries of the Soviet bloc. There is an urgent need to examine these developments and relate them to the analysis and tentative conclusions produced in this exploratory article. 39. The Financial Times, June 21, 1962.

[p023] 101 By Leon Trotsky ulture and Socialism This article was compiled by the author from a talk he gave to a Moscow club on February 3, 1926, and a number of other addresses. It appeared in the journal ‘Novy Mir’ for January 1927. This transla- tion has been made by Brian Pearce from the version printed in Vol. XXI of Leon Trotsky’s ‘Works’, published in 1927, 1. TECHNIQUE AND CULTURE LET us recall first of all that culture meant originally a. ploughed, cultivated field, as distinct from virgin forest and virgin soil. Culture was contrasted with nature, that is, what was acquired by man’s efforts was contrasted with what was given by nature. This antithesis fundamentally retains its value today. Culture is everything that has been created, built, learnt, conquered by man in the course of his entire history, in distinction from what nature has given, including the natural history of man himself as a species of animal. The science which studies man as a product of animal evolution is called anthropology. But from the moment that man separated himself from the animal kingdom—and this happened approximately when he first grasped primitive tools of stone and wood and armed the organs of his body with them—from that time there began the creation and accumulation of culture, that is, all kinds of knowledge and skill in the struggle with nature and subjugation of nature. When we speak of the culture accumulated by past generations we think first and foremost of its material achievements in the form of tools, machinery, buildings, monuments, and so on. Is this culture? Undoubtedly it is culture; the material forms in which culture is deposited — material culture. It creates, on the basis provided by nature, the fundamental setting of our lives, our everyday way of living, our creative work. But the most precious part of culture is its deposit in the con- sciousness of man himself—those methods, habits, skills, acquired abilities of ours which have developed out of the whole of pre-existing material culture and which, while drawing on this pre- existing material culture, also improve upon it. We

[p024] 102 will, then, consider it as firmly established that culture has grown out of man’s struggle with nature for existence, for the improvement of his conditions of life, for the enlargement of his power. But out of this same basis classes also have grown. In the process of adapting itself to nature, in conflict with the hostile forces of nature, human society has taken shape as a complex organization of classes. The class structure of society has determined to a decisive degree the content and form of human history, that is, its material relations and their ideological reflections. This means that historical culture has possessed a class character. Slave-owning’ society, feudal-serf-owning society, bourgeois society, each engendered a corresponding culture, different at different stages and with a multi- tude of transitional forms. Historical society has been an organization for the exploitation fo man by man. Culture has served the class organization of society. Exploiters’ society has given rise to an exploiters’ culture. But does this mean that we are against all the culture of the past? There exists, in fact, a profound contradiction here. Everything that has been conquered, created, built by man’s efforts and which serves to enhance man’s power is culture. But since it is not a matter of individual man but of social man, since culture is a social-historical phenomenon in its very essence, and since historical society has been and continues to be class society, culture is found to be the basic instrument of class oppression. Marx said: ‘The ruling ideas of an epoch are essentially the ideas of the ruling class of that epoch.’ This also applies to culture as a whole. And yet we say to the working class: master all the culture of the past, otherwise you will not build socialism. How is this to be understood? Over this contradiction many people have stumbled, and they stumble so frequently because they approach the understanding of class society superficially, semi-idealistically, forgetting that fundamentally this is the organization of production. Every class society has been formed on the basis of definite modes of struggle with nature, and these modes have changed in accordance with the develop- ment of technique. What is the basis of bases—the class organization of society or its productive forces? Without doubt the productive forces. It is precisely upon them, at a certain level of their development, that classes are formed and re-formed. In the productive forces is expressed the materialized economic skill of mankind, his historical ability to ensure his existence. On this dynamic foundation there arise classes, which by their interrelations determine the character of culture. And here, first and foremost, we have to ask ourselves regarding technique: is it only an instru- ment of class oppression? It is enough to put such ‘the course of a single century. LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 a question for it to be answered at once: no, tech- nique is the fundamental conquest of mankind; although it has also served, up to the present, as an instrument of exploitation, yet it is at the same time the fundamental condition for the emancipa- tion of the exploited. The machine strangles the wage-slave in its grip. But he can free himself only through the machine. Therein is the root of the entire question. If we do not let ourselves forget that the driving force of the historical process is the growth of the productive forces, liberating man from the domina- tion of nature, then we shall find that the proletariat needs to master the sum total of the knowledge and skill worked out by humanity in the course of its history, in order to raise itself up and rebuild life on principles of solidarity. ‘Does culture advance technique or does technique advance culture?’ asks one of the written questions lying before me. It is wrong to put the question that way. Technique cannot be counterposed to culture, for it is its mainspring. Without technique, no culture. The growth of technique advances culture. But the science and general culture which have arisen on the basis of technique constitute a powerful aid to the further growth of technique. Here we have a dialectical interaction. Comrades, if you want a simple but expressive example of the contradiction contained in technique itself, you will not find a better one than railways. If you take a look at West-European passenger trains you will see that they have carriages of different ‘classes’. These classes remind us of the classes of capitalist society. The first-class carriages are for the privileged upper circles, the second-class for the middle bourgeoisie, the third for the petty- bourgeoisie and the fourth for the proletariat, which was formerly called, with good reason, the Fourth Estate. In themselves railways constitute a colossal cultural-technical conquest by mankind which has very greatly transformed the face of the earth in But the class structure of society also influences the structure of the means of communication, And our Soviet railways are still a long way from equality—not only because they make use of carriages inherited from the past but also because NEP! merely pre- pares the way for equality, it does not accomplish it. Before the railway age civilization was hemmed in by the shores of the seas and the banks of the great rivers. The railways opened up whole continents to capitalist culture. One of the funda- mental causes, if not the most fundamental cause, of the backwardness and desolation of our Russian 1. NEP—The ‘New Economic Policy’ introduced in Soviet Russia in 1921, following the liquidation of ‘ War Communism’ —Translator’s note,

[p025] CULTURE AND SOCIALISM countryside is the lack of railways, metalled roads and access roads. In this respect the majority of our villages exist in pre-capitalist conditions. We must overcome our great ally which is at the same time our greatest adversary— our great spaces.? Socialist economy is planned economy. Planning presupposes first and foremost communication. The most important means of communication are roads and railways. Every new railway line is a path to to culture, and in our conditions also a path to socialism. Besides, with improvement in the technique of communications and in the country’s prosperity the social profile of our railway trains will change: the separation into ‘classes’ will dis- appear, everybody will travel in ‘soft’ carriages... that is, if when that time comes people are still travelling by rail and don’t prefer to use aeroplanes, which will be available to one and all. Let us take another example, the instruments of militarism, the means of extermination. In_ this sphere the class nature of society is expressed in an especially vivid and repulsive way. But there is no destructive (explosive or poisonous) substance the discovery of which would not be in itself a valuable scientific and technical achievement. Explosive and poisonous substances are used also for creative and not only for destructive purposes and open up new possibilities in the field of discovery and invention. The proletariat can take power only by breaking 2. Trotsky here refers to the value of Russia’s enormous distances and expanses for the purpose of defence, as shown in the wars of intervention— Translitor’s note. 103 up the old machinery of the class state. _.We have carried out this task as decisively as anybody has ever done. However, in building the new machinery of state we have found that we have to utilize, to a certain, fairly considerable extent, elements of the old. The further socialist reconstruction of the state machine is inseparably linked with out political, economic and cultural work in general. We must not smash up technique. The pro- letariat has taken over the factories equipped by the bourgeoisie in that state in which the revolution found them. The old equipment is still serving us to this day. This fact most graphically and directly shows us that we do not renounce the ‘heritage’. How could it be otherwise? After all, the revolution was undertaken, first and foremost, in order to get possession of the ‘heritage’. However, the old technique, in the form in which we took it over, is quite unsuitable for socialism. It constitutes a crystallization of the anarchy of capitalist economy. Competition between different enterprises, chasing after profits, unevenness of development between different branches of the economy, backwardness of certain areas, parcellization of agriculture, plundering of human forces, all this finds in technique its expression in iron and brass. But whereas the machinery of class oppression can be smashed by a revolutionary blow, the productive machinery of capitalist anarchy can be reconstructed only gradually. The completion of the restoration period, on the basis of the old equipment, has only brought us to the threshold of this tremendous task. We must carry it through at all costs. 2. THE HERITAGE OF SPIRITUAL CULTURE Spiritual culture is as contradictory as material culture. And just as from the arsenals and store- houses of material culture we take and put into circulation not bows and arrows, not stone tools or the tools of the Bronze Age, but the most improved tools available, of the most up-to-date technique, in this way also must we approach spiritual culture as well. The fundamental element in the culture of the old society was religion. It possessed paramount importance as a form of human knowledge and human unity; but there was reflected in this form above all man’s weakness in the face of nature and his helplessness within society. We utterly reject religion, along with all substitutes for it. It is different with philosophy. We have to take -from the philosophy created by class society two invaluable elements—materialism and dialectics. It was in fact from the organic combination of materialism and dialectics that Marx’s method was born and that his system arose. This method lies at the basis of Leninism. If we pass on to science in the strict sense of the word, here we find it quite obvious that we are confronted with a huge reservoir of knowledge and skill accumulated by mankind during its long life. True, one can show that in science, the aim of which is the cognition of reality, there are many tendentious class adulterations. That is quite true. If even the railways give expression to the privileged position of some and the poverty of others, this applies even more to science, the material of which is a great deal more flexible than the metal and wood out of which they make railway carriages. But we have to reckon with the fact that scientific work is basically nourished by the need to obtain knowledge of nature, Although class interests have introduced and are still introducing false tendencies even into natural science, nevertheless this falsification process is restricted by the limits beyond which it begins directly to prevent the progress of technology. If

[p026] 104 you examine natural science from the bottom upward, from the field of accumulation of elemen- tary facts up to the highest and most complex generalizations, you will see that the more empirical a piece of scientific research is, the closer it is to its material, to facts, the more indubitable are the results which it produces. The wider the field of generali- zation, the nearer natural science approaches to questions of philosophy, the more is it subjected to the influence of class inspiration. Matters are more complicated and worse in the case of the social sciences and what are called the ‘humanities’. In this sphere too, of course, what is fundamental is the striving to get to know that which exists. Thanks to this fact we have, incident- ally, the brilliant school of classical bourgeois economists. But class interest, which tells very much more directly and imperatively in the social sciences than in natural science, soon called a halt to the development of the economic thought of bourgeois society. In this field, however, we Com- munists are equipped better than in any other. Socialist theoreticians, awakened by the class struggle of the proletariat, basing themselves on bourgeois science and also criticizing it, created in the teachings of Marx and Engels the powerful method of historical materialism and the peerless application of this method in Capital. This does not mean, of course, that we are insured against the influence of bourgeois ideas in the field of economics and socio- logy generally. No, the most vulgar professorial- socialist and petty-bourgeois-Narodnik? tendencies burst out at every step into currency among us, from the old ‘treasure houses’ of knowledge, finding a nutrient medium for themselves in the unformed and contradictory relations of the transitional epoch. But in this sphere we have the indispensable criteria of Marxism, verified and enriched in the works of Lenin. And we will give an all the more triumphant rebuff to the vulgar economists and sociologists the less we shut ourselves up in the experience of the passing day, the more widely we embrace world development as a whole, distinguishing its funda- mental trends beneath mere conjunctural changes. In questions of law, morality and ideology in general the situation of bourgeois science is even more lamentable than in the field of economics. A pearl of genuine knowledge can be found in these spheres only after digging through dozens of pro- fessional dunghills. Dialectics and materialism are the basic elements in the Marxist cognition of the world. But this does 3. A reference to the ‘populist’ school, anti-scientific and disposed to idealize the peasantry, whom the Marxists had to dislodge from the leadership of the Russian revolutionary movement at the end of the {9th century.—Translator’s note. LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 not mean at all that they can be applied to any sphere of knowledge, like an ever-ready master-key. Dialectics cannot be imposed upon facts, it has to be deduced from facts, from their nature and development. Only painstaking work on a vast mass of material enabled Marx to advance the dialectical system of economics to the conception of value as social labour. Marx’s historical works were con- structed in the same way, and even his newspaper articles likewise. Dialectical materialism can be applied to new spheres of knowledge only by mastering them fron) within. The purging of bour- geois science presupposes a mastery of bourgeois science. You will get nowhere with sweeping criticism or bald commands. Learning and applica- tion here go hand in hand with critical re-working. We have the method, but there is work enough for generations to do. Marxist criticism in science must be not only vigilant but also prudent, otherwise it can degenerate into mere sycophancy, into Famusovism.4 Take psychology, even. Pavlov’s reflexology proceeds entirely along the paths of dialectical materialism. It conclusively breaks down the wall between physio- logy and psychology. The simplest reflex is physio- logical, but a system of reflexes gives us ‘conscious- PAVLOV “Generalizations are won step by step: from the saliva of dogs to poetry... ness’. The accumulation of physiological quantity gives a new ‘psychological’ quality. The method of Pavlov’s school is experimental and painstaking. Generalizations are won step by step: from the saliva of dogs to poetry—that is, to the mental mechanics 4. From Famusov, a character in Griboyedov’s play The Folly of being Wise (1824), a high official whose sole interest is in living up to his rank; he has a horror of anything that may give offence to authority and so disturb his comfortable situation. Trotsky here hits at people who rejected the work of Freud and his followers in a sweeping, indiscriminate way, not on scientific grounds but because they knew it was looked upon with disfavour by the party leadership.—Translator’s note.

[p027] CULTURE AND SOCIALISM of poetry, not to its social content—though the paths that bring us to poetry have as yet not been revealed. ‘The school of the Viennese psycho-analyst Freud ' proceeds in a different way. It assumes in advance that the driving force of the most complex and delicate of psychic processes is a physiological need. In this general sense it is materialistic, if you leave aside the question whether it does not assign too big a place to the sexual factor at the expense of others, for this is already a dispute within the frontiers of materialism. But the psycho-analyst approaches the problems of consciousness not experimentally, going from the lowest phenomena to the highest, from the simple reflex to the complex reflex, but attempts to take all these intermediate stages in one jump, from above downwards, from the religious myth, the lyrical poem or the dream straight to the physio- logical basis of the psyche. The idealists tell us that the psyche is an inde- pendent entity, that the ‘soul’ is a bottomless well. Both Pavlov and Freud think that the bottom of the ‘soul’ is physiology. But Pavlov, like a diver, descends to the bottom and laboriously investigates the well from there upwards; while Freud stands over the well and with penetrating gaze tries to pierce its ever-shifting and troubled waters and to make out FREUD ‘ from the religious myth, the lyrical poem or the dream straight to the physiological _ basis of the psyche, or guess the shape of things down below. Pavlov’s method is experiment, Freud’s is conjecture, some- times fantastic conjecture. The attempt to declare psycho-analysis ‘incompatible’ with Marxism and simply turns one’s back on Freudism is too simple, or, more accurately, too simplistic. But we are in any case not obliged to adopt Freudism. It is a working hypothesis which can produce and un- doubtedly does produce deductions and conjectures which proceed along the lines of materialist psycho- logy. The experimental procedure will in due course provide the tests for these conjectures. But we have no grounds and no right to put a ban on the other 105 procedure which, even though it may be less reliable, yet tries to anticipate the conclusions to which the: experimental procedure is advancing only very slowly.5 By means of these examples I wished to show, if only partially, both the heterogeneity of our scientific heritage and also the complexity of the paths by way of which the proletariat can advance to mastery of it. If it is true that in economic con- struction problems are not solved by decree and we have to ‘learn to trade’, so also in science the mere issuing of bald commands can achieve nothing but harm and disgrace. In this sphere we have to ‘learn to learn’. Art is one of the ways in which man finds his bearings in the world; in this sense the heritage of art is not distinguished from the heritage of science and technique—and it is no less contradictory than they. Unlike science, however, art is a form of cognition of the world not as a system of laws but aS a group of images, and at the same time it is a way of inspiring certain feelings and moods. The art of past centuries has made man more complex and flexible, has raised his mentality to a higher level, has enriched him in an all-round way. This enrichment is a precious achievement of culture. Mastery of the art of the past is, therefore, a necessary pre-condition not only for the creation of new art but also for the building of the new society, for communism needs people with highly developed minds. Can, however, the art of the past enrich us with an artistic knowledge of the world? It can, precisely because it is able to give nourish- ment to our feelings and to educate them. If we were groundlessly to repudiate the art of the past, we should at once become poorer spiritually. One notices nowadays a tendency here and there to put forward the idea that art has as its purpose only the inspiration of certain moods, and not at all the cognition of reality. The conclusion drawn from this is: with what sort of sentiments can the art of the nobility or of the bourgeoisie infect us? This is radically false. The significance of art as a means of cognition—including for the mass of the people, and in particular for them—is not at all less than its ‘sentimental’ significance. The ancient epic, the fable, the song, the traditional saying, the folk- rhyme provide knowledge in graphic form, they throw light on the past, they generalize experience, they widen the horizon, and only in connection with them and thanks to this connection is it possible to 5. This question has, of course, nothing in common with the cultivation of a sham Freudism as an erotic indulgence or piece of ‘naughtiness’. Such claptrap has nothing to do with science and merely expresses decadent moods; the centre of gravity is shifted from the cortex to the spinal cord . . —Note by Trotsky.

[p028] 106 ‘tune in’. This applies to all literature generally, not only to epic poetry but to lyric poetry as well. It applies to painting and to sculpture. The only exception, to a certain degree, is music, the effect of which is powerful but one-sided! Music too, of course, relies upon a particular knowledge of nature, its sounds and rhythms. But here the knowledge is so deeply hidden, the results of the inspiration of nature are to such an extent refracted through a person’s nerves, that music acts as a self-sufficing ‘revelation’. Attempts to approximate all forms of art to music, as to the art of ‘infection’,© have often been made and have always signified a depreciation in art of the role of the intelligence in favour of formless feeling, and in this sense they were and are reactionary. . . . Worst of all, of course, are those works of ‘art’ which offer neither graphic knowledge nor artistic ‘infection’ but instead advance exorbitant pretensions. In our country no few such works are 6. Here Trotsky tilts at Tolstoy’s ideas on art and their revival by Bukharin, in AHistorical Materialism— Translator’s note. LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 printed, and, unfortunately, not in the students’ books of art schools but in many thousands of copies. . . Culture is a social phenomenon. Just because of this, language, as the organ of intercourse between men, is its most important instrument. The culture of language itself is the most important condition for the growth of all branches of culture, especially science and art. Just as technique is not satisfied with the old measuring apparatus but is creating new ones, micrometers, voltameters, and so on, striving for ard attaining ever greater accuracy, so in the matter of language, of skill in choosing the appro- priate words and combining them in the appropriate ways, constant, systematic, painstaking work is necessary in order to achieve the highest degree of accuracy, clarity and vividness. The foundation for this work must be the fight against illiteracy, semi- literacy and near-illiteracy. The next stage of this work is the mastering of Russian classical literature. Yes, culture was the main instrument of class oppression. But it also, and only it, can become the instrument of socialist emancipation. 3. THE CONTRADICTIONS IN OUR CULTURE Town and country What is special about our position is that we—at the point where the capitalist West and the colonial- peasant East meet—have been the first to make a socialist revolution. The regime of proletarian dictatorship has been established first in a country with a monstrous inheritance of backwardness and barbarism, so that among our people whole cen- turies of history separate a Siberian nomad from a Moscow or Leningrad worker. Our social forms are transitional to socialism and consequently are beyond comparison higher than capitalist forms. In this sense we rightly consider ourselves the most advanced country in the world. But technique, which lies at the basis of material and every other kind of culture, is extremely backward in our country in comparison with the advanced capitalist countries. This constitutes the fundamental con- tradiction of our present reality. The historical task which follows from this is to raise our technique to the height of our social formation. If we do not succeed in doing this, our social order will inevitably decline to the level of our technical backwardness. Yes, in order to appreciate the entire significance of technical progress for us it is necessary to tell our- selves frankly: if we do not succeed in filling the Soviet forms of our social order with the appropriate productive technique we shall shut off the possibility of our transition to socialism and we shall be turned back to capitalism—and to what sort of capitalism: semi-serf, semi-colonial capitalism. The Struggle for technique is for us the struggle for socialism, with which the whole future of our culture is bound up. Here is a fresh and very expressive example of our cultural contradictions. There recently appeared in the papers a report that our Leningrad Public Library holds first place for the number of books: it now possesses 4,250,000 books! Our first feeling is a legitimate feeling of Soviet pride: our library is the first in the world! To what are we indebted for this achievement? To the fact that we have expro- priated private libraries, Through nationalizing private property we have created a richer cultural institution, accessible to everyone. The great advantages of the Soviet order are indisputably shown in this simple fact. But at the same time our cultural backwardness is expressed in the fact that in ‘Fresh and very expressive example of our cultural contrad ctions.

[p029] CULTURE AND SOCIALISM our country the percentage of illiterates is greater than in any other European country. The library is the biggest in the world, but as yet only a minority of the population reads books. And that is how things are in almost every respect. Nationalized industry, with gigantic and far from fantastic schemes for Dnieprostroi, the Volga-Don canal and so on—and the peasants do their threshing with chains and rollers, Our marriage laws are permeated with the spirit of socialism—and physical violence still plays no small part in our family life. These and similar contradictions result from the entire structure of our culture, at the meeting-point of West and East. The basis of our backwardness is the monstrous predominance of the country over the town, of agriculture over industry, while in the country itself, moreover, the most backward implements and modes of production predominate. When we speak of historical serfdom we above all have in mind estate- relations,’ the bondage of the peasant to the landlord and the Tsarist official. But, comrades, serfdom has a deeper foundation under it: the bondage of man to the soil, the dependence of the peasant on the elements. Have you read Gleb Uspensky?® I fear that the younger generation do not read him. His works should be republished, or at least his best ones, and there are some splendid things among them. Uspensky was a Narodnik. His political programme was utopian through and through. But Uspensky, a writer about the morals and manners of country life, was not only a splendid artist but also a remarkable realist. He was able to appreciate the peasant’s way of life and his mentality as derived phenomena, which had developed on an economic basis and were wholly determined by it. He was able to appreciate that the economic basis of the countryside was the bondage of the peasant in his labour-process to the soil and in general to the forces of nature. You should certainly read at least his Power of the Land. With Uspensky an. artist’s intuition takes the place of Marxist method, and in its results it in many respects rivals the latter. For this reason Uspensky the artist was constantly en- gaged in mortal conflict with Uspensky the Narodnik. From the artist we must still learn, even now, if we want to understand the many survivals of serfdom in peasant life, especially in family life, which often slop over into urban life as well; it is enough to listen to certain notes which are being sounded in the current discussion about problems of the marriage laws! Capitalism has throughout the world brought to extreme tension the contradiction between industry 7. Le., relations between different ‘estates’, social groups with different legal status and rights.—Translator’s note, 8. Russian writer of the 1870s and 1880s.—Translator’s note. ‘ ... the use of machines on a large scale and in the right combination,

[p030] 108 and agriculture, town and country. In Russia, owing to the lag in our historical development, this contradiction is quite monstrous in character. After all, our industry had already begun to strive to imitate West-European and American models, while our countryside remained in the depths of the 17th century and even more remote times. Even in America capitalism has proved obviously unable to raise agriculture to the level of industry. This is a task which has entirely passed to socialism’s respon- sibility. In our conditions, with the colossal pre- dominance of country over town, the industrializa- tion of agriculture is the most important sector of socialist construction. By the industrialization of agriculture we mean two processes which only in combination can, in the last analysis, finally wipe out the frontier between town and country. Let us dwell a little longer on this question which is so important for us. The industrialization of agriculture consists, on the one hand, in the separation from the rural household economy of a whole series of branches of the pre- liminary processing of industrial raw material and foodstuffs. All industry in general has emerged from the countryside, through the handicrafts and the work of the village craftsman, through the detachment of particular branches from the closed-in system of domestic economy, through specialization, the creation of the appropriate apprenticeship and technique, and later also machine production. Our _ Soviet industrialization must, to a considerable extent, proceed along this path, the path of the socialization of a whole series of production pro- cesses which lie between agriculture in the strict sense of the word and industry. The example of the United States shows that here immeasurable possibilities are open to us. But the question is not exhausted by that. The overcoming of the contradiction between agriculture and industry presupposes the industrialization of arable and pastoral farming, horticulture and so on. It means that these branches of production too must be placed on a basis of scientific technology: the use of machines on a large scale and in the right combination, tractorization and__ electrification, proper rotation of crops, laboratory testing of methods and results, correct organization of the whole production process with the most expedient use of labour power, and so on. Of course, even highly-organized cultivation will differ from engin- eering. But for that matter there are profound differences within industry itself, between different branches. If today we have the right to counterpose agriculture to industry as a whole, this is because agriculture is carried on in scattered units by primitive methods, with servile dependence of the producer on natural conditions and in circumstances of an extremely uncivilized way of living for the peasants. LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 It is not enough to socialize, that is, to transfer to factories, particular branches of present-day agri- culture, such as butter-making, cheese-making, the production of starch and molasses, and so on. It is necessary to socialize agriculture itself, that is, to wrest it from its present parcellization and in place of the present wretched pecking at the soil to set up scientifically-organized wheat and rye ‘factories’, cattle and sheep ‘factories’ and so on. That this is possible is shown in part by the capitalist experi- ence already available, in particular the agricultural experience of Denmark, where even the chickens are subjected to planning and standardization, laying eggs to order in huge quantities, of uniform size and colour. The industrialization of agriculture means the elimination of the present fundamental contradiction between town and country and so between peasant and worker: as regards their role in the country’s economy, their living conditions, their cultural level, they must come closer together in proportion as the frontier between them disappears. A _ society in which mechanized cultivation forms an equal part of the planned economy, in which the town has absorbed into itself the advantages of the country (spaciousness, greenery) while the country has been enriched with the advantage of the town (paved roads, electric light, piped water-supply, drains), that is to say, where the antithesis of town and country has itself disappeared, where the peasant and the worker have been transformed into participants of equal worth and equal rights in a single production process — such a society will also be a genuine socialist society. The road to this society is long and hard. The most important landmarks along this road are mighty electric power stations. They will bring to the country light and transforming power: agaiist the power of the land, the power of electricity! Not long ago we opened the Shatura power station, one of our best constructions, erected on a peat-bog. From Moscow to Shatura is only about a hundred kilometres. You might say the two places could shake hands. And yet what a difference in conditions! Moscow is the capital of the Com- munist International. But you go a few dozen kilo- metres and you are in the backwoods, with snow- laden fir trees, frozen marshes and wild beasts. Dark hamlets of log-huts dozing under the snow. From the carriage window you can sometimes see the tracks of wolves. Where the Shatura station stands today, a few years ago, when they began construction work there, elks had their homes. Today the distance between Moscow and Shatura is covered by an elegant series of metal masts which carry the cable for a current of 115,000 volts. And under these masts vixens and she-wolves will this spring bring forth their cubs. That is what our

[p031] CULTURE AND SOCIALISM entire culture is like—made up of extreme con- tradictions, of the highest achievements of technique and generalizing thought, on the one hand, and on the other of the primeval conditions of the taiga.9 Shatura lives on peat, as though on pasture. Truly, all the wonders created by the childish imaginings of religion and even the creative fantasy of poets pale before this simple fact: machines which occupy very little space are eating up an age-old bog, transforming it into invisible power and return- ing it along light-weight cables to that very industry which created and set up these machines. Shatura is a thing of beauty. Gifted and devoted builders made it. Its beauty is not put on, is not an affair of tinsel decoration, but grows from the inherent properties and needs of technique itself. The highest and the only criterion of technique is fitness for purpose. The test of functional fitness is provided by saving. And this presupposes the most complete correspondence between part and whole, means and end. Economic and technical criteria fully coincide with aesthetic ones. One may say, and it will not be a paradox, that Shatura is a thing of beauty because a kilowatt-hour of its 9. The dense forests of North Russia, between the tundra and the steppe.—Translator’s note. 109 power is cheaper than a kilowatt-hour of power from other stations situated in similar conditions. Shatura stands on a bog, We have many bogs in the Soviet Union, very many more than we have power stations. We have also many other kinds of fuel which await transformation into motive power. In the south the Dnieper flows through a very rich industrial area, spending the mighty force of its head of water to no purpose, bounding over age-old rapids, and waiting for us to bridle its flow with a dam and compel it to give light, motion, wealth to towns, factories and fields. Let us compel it! In the United States of America they generate 500 kilowatt-hours of power per head of population every year, while here we generate only 20 kilowatt- hours, that is, one-twenty-fifth as much. Mechanical motive power in general is only one-fiftieth as much per person here as in the United States. The Soviet system shod with American technique will be socialism. Our social order offers a different, incom- parably more expedient application for American technique. But American technique for its part will transform our order, liberating it from the heritage of backwardness, primitiveness and _ barbarism. From the combination of the Soviet order with American technique there will be born a new technique and a new culture—technique and culture for all, without favourite sons or stepsons. ‘The most important landmarks along this road are mighty electric power stations.’

[p032] 110 LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 The ‘conveyor’ principle of socialist economy The principle of socialist economy is harmony, that is, continuity based on inner concord. What is the conveyor? An endless moving belt which brings to the worker or takes from him everything required by the course of his work. It is now well known how Ford uses a combination of conveyors as a means of internal transport: transmission and supply. But the conveyor is something bigger than that: it constitutes a method of regulating the pro- duction process itself, in that the worker is obliged to harmonize his movements with the movement of the endless belt. Capitalism uses this circumstance for higher and perfected exploitation of the worker. But this use of the conveyor is connected with capitalism, not with the conveyor itself. In which direction is the development of methods of regulating labour in fact proceeding: in the direction of piece- work or in the direction of the conveyor method? Everything points to the conveyor. Piece-work, like every other form of individual control over work, is characteristic of capitalism in the first epochs of its development. This procedure ensures the maximum physiological loading of each individual worker but not the co-ordination of the efforts of different workers. Both of these tasks are accomplished automatically by the conveyor. A socialist organiza- tion of the economy must endeavour to bring about a reduction in the physiological load on each indi- vidual worker, in accordance with the growth in technical power, while safeguarding at the same time the co-ordination of the efforts of different workers. This will be the significance of the socialist conveyor as distinct from the capitalist one. Speak- ing more concretely, the whole problem here consists in regulating the movement of the belt in accordance with a given number of working hours, or, contrari- wise, in regulating working time in accordance with a given speed of the belt. Under the capitalist system the conveyor is used within the confines of an individual enterprise as a method of internal transport. But the principle of the conveyor is in itself very much broader. Each separate enterprise receives from outside raw material, fuel, auxiliary materials, supplementary labour-power. The relations between the separate enterprises, however gigantic they may be, are regulated by the laws of the market—limited, to be sure, in many instances, by all sorts of long-term agreements. But every factory taken separately, and still more society as a whole, is interested in raw material being supplied in good time, not accumu- lating wastefully in the stores, but also not causing stoppages in production, that is, in other words, it is interested in this material being supplied on. the conveyor principle, in complete accord with the rhythm of production. For this there is no need PABOTY J HAK XPOHO METP 7 = CAEAAEM: BbIBEPEH- HYHW ~ Early Soviet poster [‘Let us take the storm of the Revolution in Soviet Russia, unite it to the pulse of American life, and do our work like a chronometer!’ ] to imagine a conveyor necessarily in the form of an endless moving belt. The forms of the conveyor can be endlessly varied. A railway, if it is working to plan, that is, without cross-hauls, without seasonal piling up of loads, in short, without elements of capitalist anarchy—and under socialism that is just how it will work—is like a mighty conveyor, ensuring the service of factories in good time with raw material, fuel, materials and personnel. The same applies to steamships, lorries, etc. All kinds of means of communication form elements of transport within the production-system from the point of view of the planned economy as a whole. An oil pipe-line is a form of conveyor for liquids. The wider the network of oil pipe-lines the less need there is for reservoirs, the less oil is transformed into dead capital. The conveyor system does not at all presuppose that enterprises are located very close together. On the contrary, modern technique makes it possible to scatter them, not, of course, in chaotic and casual fashion, but strictly taking into account the most

[p033] CULTURE AND SOCIALISM advantageous location for each separate factory. The possibility of a wide scattering of industrial enterprises, without which the town cannot be dissolved in the country or the country in the town, is ensured to a very great degree by the use of electricity as motive power. A metal cable is the most perfect conveyor of power, making it possible to divide motive power into the smallest of units, setting it to work and switching it off by merely turning a knob. It is precisely by these characteris- tics which it possesses that the power ‘conveyor’ clashes most sharply with the partitions erected by private property. Electricity at its present level of development is the most ‘socialist’ sector of tech- nique; and no wonder, for it is the most advanced sector. Gigantic land-improvement systems, for the in- draught or drainage of water, constitute, from this standpoint, the water conveyors of agriculture. The more completely chemistry, engineering and electrifi- cation liberate cultivation from the effects of the elements, giving it the highest degree of planned regularity, the more completely will present-day agriculture be included within the system of the socialist conveyor which regulates and co-ordinates the whole of production, beginning with the subsoil (extraction of ore and coal) and the soil (ploughing and sowing). Old man Ford tries to build a sort of social philosophy upon his experience with the conveyor. In this attempt of his we see an extremely curious combination of experience on an exceptionally large scale in the field of production management with the insufferable narrowness of a smug philosopher who has become a multi-millionaire while remaining merely a petty-bourgeois with a lot of money. Ford says: ‘if you want wealth for yourself and well-being for your fellow-citizens, act like me. Kant demanded that everyone should act in such a way that his conduct could serve as the norm for others. In the philosophical sense Ford is a Kantian. But in practice the ‘norm’ for Ford’s 200,000 workers is not Ford’s conduct but the gliding past them of his automatic conveyor: it determines the rhythm of their lives, the movement of their hands, feet and thoughts. For ‘the well-being of your fellow-citizens’ it is necessary to separate Fordism from Ford and to socialize and purge it. This is what socialism does. ‘But what about the monotony of labour, de- personalized, and despiritualized by the conveyor?’ I am asked in one of the written questions sent up. The cultural It is now, I think, clear to everybody that the creation of a new culture is not an independent task to be carried out separately from our economic work 111 This is not a serious fear. If you think and discuss it through to the end, it is directed against the division of labour and against machinery in general. This is a reactionary path. Socialism and hostility to machinery have never had and never will have anything in common. The fundamental, main and most important task is to abolish poverty. It is necessary that human labour shall produce the maximum possible quantity of goods. Grain, shoes, clothing, newspapers, everything that is necessary must be made available in such quantities that no one may fear that there will not be enough. Poverty must be abolished, and with it, greed. Prosperity and leisure must be won, and with them the joy of living, for everyone. A high productivity of labour cannot be achieved without mechanization and automation, the finished expression of which is the conveyor. The monotony of labour is com- pensated for by its reduced duration and its increased easiness. There will always be in society branches of industry which demand personal creativity, and those who find their calling in production will make their way to them. What we are concerned with here is the basic type of production in its most important branches, until at least a fresh chemical and power revolution in technique sweeps aside mechanization as we know it today. But it is for the future to worry about that. A voyage in a boat propelled by oars demands great personal creativity. A voyage in a steamboat is more ‘mono- tonous’ but more comfortable and more certain. Moreover, you can’t cross the ocean in a rowing- boat anyway. And we have to cross the ocean of human need. Everyone knows that physical requirements are very much more limited than spiritual ones. An excessive gratification of physical requirements quickly leads to satiety. Spiritual requirements, however, know no frontiers. But in order that spiritual requirements may flourish it is necessary that physical requirements be fully satisfied. We cannot, of course, put off and we do not put off the struggle to raise the spiritual level of the masses until we have got rid of unemployment, the problems of waifs and strays, and poverty. Everything that can be done must be done. But it would be a miserable and contemptible daydream to imagine that we can create a truly new culture before we have ensured prosperity, plenty and leisure for the masses. We must and will test our progress by its eflection in the everyday life of the workers and peasants. revolution and our social and cultural construction as a whole. Does trade belong to the sphere of ‘proletarian culture’? From the abstract standpoint one would

[p034] 112 have to answer this question in the negative. But the abstract standpoint is valueless. In the transi- ‘ tional epoch, and especially in its initial stage in which we now are, products assume, and will continue for a long time yet to assume, the social form of commodities. And we have to know how to deal properly with commodities, that is, to know how to buy them and sell them. Unless we do, we shall not advance from the initial stage to the next stage. Lenin told us to learn to trade, and recom- mended us to learn from the examples provided by West-European culture, Trading culture forms, as we now realize very firmly, a most important part of the culture of the transitional period. Whether we should call the trading culture of the workers’ state and the co-operatives ‘proletarian culture’ I don’t know; but that it is a step towards Socialist Culture is beyond dispute. When Lenin spoke of the cultural revolution he saw its fundamental content as raising the cultural level of the masses. The metric system is a product of bourgeois science. But teaching this simple system of measurement to a hundred millions of peasants means carrying out a big revolutionary- cultural task. It is almost certain that we shall not achieve it without the aid of tractors and electric power. At the foundation of culture lies technique. The decisive instrument in the cultural revolution must be a revolution in technique. In relation to capitalism we say that the develop- ment of the productive forces is pressing against the social forms of the bourgeois state and bourgeois property. Having accomplished the proletarian revolution we say: the development of the social] forms is pressing against the development of the productive forces, that is, technique. The big link by seizing which we can carry through the cultural revolution is the link of industrialization, and not literature or philosophy at all. I hope that these words will not be understood in the sense of an unfriendly or disrespectful attitude to philosophy and poetry. Without generalizing thought and without art man’s life would be bare and beggarly. But that is just what the life of millions of people is to an enormous extent at the present time. The cultural revolution must consist in opening up to them the possiblity of real access to culture and not only to its wretched fag-ends. But this is impossible without creating very big material pre-conditions. That is why a machine which automatically manu- factures bottles is at the present time a first-rate The culture To trade in a cultured way means, in particular, not to deceive, that is, to break with our national tradition in trading matters: ‘if you don’t deceive you won't sell’. Lying, deceit, this is not merely an individual sin LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962 factor in the cultural revolution, while an heroic poem is only a tenth-rate factor. Marx said once about philosophers that they had interpreted the world sufficiently, the task was to turn it upside down. There was no disesteem for philo- sophy in those words of his. Marx was himself one of the greatest philosophers of all time. These words meant only that the further development of philosophy, as of all culture in general, both material and spiritual, requires a revolution in social relations. And so Marx appealed from philosophy to the pro- letarian revolution, not against philosophy but on its behalf. In this same sense we can now Say: it is good when poets sing of the revolution and the proletariat, but a powerful turbine sings even better. We have plenty of songs of middling quality, which have remained the property of small circles, but we have terribly few turbines. I don’t wish to imply by this that mediocre verses hinder the appearance of turbines. No, that cannot be said at all. But a correct orientation of public opinion, that is, an understanding of the real relationship between phenomena, the how and why of things, is absolutely necessary. The cultural revolution must not be understood in a superficially idealistic way or as something which is an affair for small study-groups. It is a question of changing the conditions of life, the methods of work and the everyday habits of a great nation, of a whole family of nations. Only a mighty tractor system which for the first time in history will enable the peasant to straighten his back; only a_ glass-blowing machine which produces hundreds of bottles and liberates the lungs of the oid-time glass-blower; only a turbine of dozens and hundreds of thousands horse-power; only an aero- plane available to everyone—only all these things together will ensure the cultural revolution, not for a minority but for all. And only such a cultural revolution will deserve the name. Only on that basis will a new philosophy and a new art come to flower. Marx said: ‘The ruling ideas of an epoch are essentially the ideas of the ruling class of that epoch.’ This is true also in relation to the pro- letariat, but quite differently from what it means in relation to other classes. The bourgeoisie, when it had seized power, tried to perpetuate this power. All its culture was adapted to this purpose. The proietariat, having taken power, must unquestionably try to shorten as much as possible the duration of its rule, to bring nearer the classless socialist society. of morais but a function of the social order. Lying is a method of struggle and, consequently, is derived from the contradiction between interests. . The fundamental contradictions result from relations between classes. True, one can say that deceit is

[p035] CULTURE AND SOCIALISM older than class society. Animals already show cunning and deceive others in the struggle for existence. A considerable part was played by deceit —military cunning—in the life of primitive tribes. This sort of deceit resulted more or less directly from the zoological struggle for existence. But from the time when ‘civilized’, that is, class society appeared, lying became frightfully complicated, it became a social function, was refracted along class lines and also entered into the corpus of human ‘culture’. That, however, is a part of culture which socialism will not take over. Relations in socialist society, that is, the higher development of socialist society, will be thoroughly transparent and will not require such auxiliary methods as deceit, lies, falsification, forgery, treachery and perfidy. However, we are still a long way from that. In our relationships and morals there are still very many lies of both serf-owning and bourgeois origin. The highest expression of serf-owning ideology is religion. The internal relations of feudal- monarchical society were based on blind tradition and were elevated into the form of religious myths. A myth is an imagined, false interpretation of natural phenomena and social institutions and the connections between them. However, not only the deceived, that is, the oppressed masses, but also those in whose name the deception was carried out, the rulers, mostly believed in the myth, and were honestly guided by it. An objectively false ideology, woven out of superstitions, does not in_ itself necessarily mean subjective mendacity. Only in proportion as social relations become more com- plicated, that is, as the bourgeois order develops and religious mythology comes into ever-greater con- tradiction with it, does religion become a source of greater and greater trickery and deliberate deception. Developed bourgeois ideology is rationalistic and directed against mythology. The radical bourgeoisie tried to get on without religion and to build a state upon reason, not tradition. This was expressed in democracy with its priciples of liberty, equality and fraternity. Capitalist economy created, however, a monstrous contradiction between everyday reality and democratic principles. In order to make up for these contradictions higher-grade lying was needed. Nowhere is there such political lying as in bourgeois democracies. This is now not the objective ‘lying’ of mythology, but consciously organized deception of the people by means of a combination of methods of exceptional complexity. The technique of lying is cultivated no less than the technique of electricity. The most lying press is found in the most ‘developed’ democracies, in France and the United States. But at the same time, and this must be frankly admitted, in France they trade more honestly than here, and at all events with incomparably more attention to the customer’s requirements. Having attained a certain level of prosperity, the bourgeoisie renounces swindling methods of primary accumula- 113 tion, not from any abstract moral notions but for material reasons: petty deceit, counterfeiting, grab- bing, do harm to the reputation of an enterprise and undermine its future prospects. The principles of ‘honest’ trade, derived from the interests of trade itself at a certain level of its development, enter into morals, become ‘moral’ rules, and are watched over by public opinion. True, the imperialist war brought colossal changes in this sphere too, throwing Western Europe a long way back. But the post-war ‘stabilization’ efforts of capitalism have overcome the more malignant manifestations of the reversion to savagery in trade. In any case, if you take our Soviet trade in its total scope, that is, from the factory to the consumer in the remote village, then you will have to recognize that we still trade in an incomparably less cultured way than the advanced capitalist countries. This results from our poverty, from the insufficient supply of goods, from our economic and cultural backwardness. The regime of proletarian dictatorship is irreconcil- ably hostile both to the objectively false mythology of the Middle Ages and to the conscious falsity of capitalist democracy. The revolutionary regime is vitally interested in laying bare social relations, not in covering them up. This means that it is interested in political truthfulness, in saying what is. But one must not forget that the regime of revolutionary dictatorship is a transitional regime and therefore a contradictory one. The existence of powerful enemies obliges us to resort to military cunning, and cunning is inseparable from falsehood. It is only necessary that the cunning used in the struggle against foes be not employed for the deluding of one’s own people, that is, of the working masses and their party. This is a fundamental requirement of revolutionary policy, which runs like a red thread through all of Lenin’s work. But while our new state and social forms create the possibility and necessity of a higher degree of truthfulness than has hitherto been attained in relations between rulers and ruled, this cannot at all be said as yet about our relationships in everyday life, on which our economic and cultural backward- ness and in general the entire heritage of the past continue to weigh very heavily. We live much better than we did in 1920. But the lack of the necessary good things of life still sets its mark heavily on our life and on our morals, and will continue to do so for a number of years. From this result contra- dictions big and small, big and small disproportions, struggle connected with these contradictions and, connected with this struggle, cunning, lies, deceit. There is only one way out: raising the level of technique, in both production and trade. A correct orientation in this direction must already in itself help to improve ‘morals’. The interaction of im- proved technique and morals will advance us along the road to a social order of civilized co-operators, that is, to socialist culture.

[p036] 114 LABOUR REVIEW—Autumn 1962