Utopian, scientific and real socialism
Optional. Socialism
Utopias and dystopias
These utopias were not generally intended to be implemented, with a few exceptions (Plato in Syracuse, Jesuit missions). They were more ways of criticizing existing societies than concrete plans for alternative ones.
“Utopian” socialism
Anarchism
Bakunin
Kropotkin
Proudhon
Goldman
Important: Marx and Engels. �“Scientific” socialism
Marx and Engels. Characteristics of socialism. Plan or market
Marx and Engels. Characteristics of socialism. Distribution and valuation
Real socialisms
Important. The failure of real socialism. Russia-USSR
Important. The failure of real socialism. Other cases
“War communism”
Ideas of the Bolsheviks �before War Communism
Ideas of the Bolsheviks �before War Communism
Bukharin and Preobrazhensky : ABC of Communism , 1919
Nicolai Bukharin (1888-1938)
https://archive.org/details/abcdelcomunismo00bukh/page/n26/mode/1up
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_ABC_del_comunismo
Yevgeny Preobrazhensky (1886-1937)
Ideas of the Bolsheviks �before War Communism
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870-1924) �The State and Revolution , 1918, https://archive.org/details/obras-completas-lenin-tomo33/page/102/mode/2up?view=theater
?
?
“War communism”
“War communism”
Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed , https://www.marxists.org/espanol/trotsky/1936/rt/index.htm
“The first three years following the revolution were marked by open and brutal civil war. Economic life was completely subordinated to the needs of the front. In the face of extreme resource scarcity, cultural life, characterized by the bold breadth of thought, especially that of Lenin, was relegated to the background. This is what is known as the period of War Communism (1918-1921), a heroic parallel to the War Socialism of capitalist countries. The economic objectives of the Soviet government were primarily limited to sustaining the war industries and utilizing the meager existing reserves to combat the war and save urban populations from starvation. War Communism was, in essence, a regulation of consumption in a besieged fortress.”
It must be acknowledged, however, that their initial intentions were broader. The Soviet government attempted to achieve a planned economy through regulation, both in terms of consumption and production. In other words, it envisioned a gradual, unmodified transition from the system of war communism to true communism. The Bolshevik Party program adopted in 1919 stated: "In the area of distribution, the power of the Soviets will persevere inflexibly replacing trade with a nationally organized distribution of products, based on a comprehensive plan."
But the conflict between reality and the program of war communism became increasingly apparent: production steadily declined, not only due to the disastrous consequences of the hostilities, but also to the disappearance of the incentive of individual self-interest among producers. The city demanded wheat and raw materials from the countryside, giving nothing in return but pieces of multicolored paper called money, a practice long ingrained in the culture. The peasant buried his reserves, and the government sent detachments of armed workers to seize the grain. The peasant sowed less. Industrial production in 1921, the year following the end of the civil war, rose, at best, to one-fifth of what it had been before the war. Steel production fell from 4.2 million tons to 183,000, a decrease of 23 times. The global harvest fell from 801 million quintals to 503 million in 1922. A terrible famine ensued. Foreign trade collapsed from 2.9 billion rubles to 30 million. The ruin of the productive forces surpasses anything known in history. The country, and with it, the power structure, found itself on the brink of collapse.
The utopian hopes of war communism were subsequently subjected to extremely severe and, in many respects, justified criticism.
“War Communism”: �Kropotkin ’s Letters to Lenin
https://web.seducoahuila.gob.mx/biblioweb/upload/cartas_a_vladimir_lenin.pdf
https://elsudamericano.wordpress.com/2019/11/09/una-conversacion-entre-lenin-y-kropotkin/
Bolshevik propaganda poster: �Remember the hungry!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Soviet_placard.jpg
Hyperinflation. 250 million ruble banknote, 1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_early_Soviet_Russia
The New Economic Policy, NEP
The New Economic Policy, NEP
Ideas of the Bolsheviks �after War Communism. The NEP.
Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed , https://www.marxists.org/espanol/trotsky/1936/rt/index.htm
“Lenin argued for the need to restore the market to ensure the survival of millions of isolated peasant farms accustomed to defining their relationships with the outside world through trade. The circulation of goods should serve as the link between the peasants and nationalized industry. The theoretical formula for this link is very simple: industry will provide the countryside with the necessary goods at prices that allow the state to forgo requisitioning agricultural products.”
The reform of economic relations with the countryside was undoubtedly the most urgent and thorniest task of the NEP. Experience quickly demonstrated that industry itself, even when socialized, needed monetary calculation methods developed by capitalism. The plan could not rely solely on intellectual data. The interplay of supply and demand remained, and will continue to be for a long time, the indispensable material basis and the saving grace.
The legalized market began its work with the help of a reorganized monetary system. From 1923 onward, thanks to the initial impetus from the countryside, industry was revived and quickly demonstrated intense activity. Suffice it to say that production doubled in 1922 and 1923 and reached its pre-war level in 1926, meaning it had increased fivefold since 1921. Harvests increased in parallel, but much more modestly.
[…]
“Small-scale commodity production inevitably creates exploiters. As agriculture recovered, differentiation increased within the peasant masses; the old path of easy development was followed. The kulak—the wealthy peasant—grew richer more rapidly than agriculture progressed. The government's policy, whose slogan was 'Towards the countryside,' was in reality oriented towards the kulaks. The agricultural tax was much heavier for poor peasants than for wealthy ones, who, moreover, benefited from state credit. Surplus wheat, generally owned by wealthy peasants, served to enslave the poor and was sold at speculative prices to the urban petty bourgeoisie. Bukharin , theorist at that time of the ruling faction, directed his famous slogan to the peasants: ' Get rich !' This meant, in theory, the gradual assimilation of the kulaks into socialism. In practice, it meant the enrichment of the minority at the expense of the masses.” the vast majority.
The government, trapped by its own policies, was forced to retreat step by step before the rural petty bourgeoisie. The use of wage labor in agriculture and the renting of land were legalized in 1925. The peasantry became polarized between the small capitalist and the day laborer. Meanwhile, the state, deprived of industrial goods, was eliminated from the rural market. As if sprung from the earth, an intermediary emerged between the kulak and the small artisan master. Even the state-owned enterprises had to resort, with increasing frequency, to traders for raw materials. The rising tide of capitalism was evident everywhere. Anyone who reflected on the matter could easily be convinced that the transformation of the forms of property ownership, far from solving the problem of socialism, only served to raise it.
[…]
“Of course, the ruling faction never repudiated the collectivization of agriculture 'in principle,' but it assigned it a timeframe of decades. The future People's Commissar for Agriculture, Yakovlev , wrote in 1927 that if the socialist transformation of the countryside could only be carried out through collectivization, 'it will not, of course, be in one, two, or three years, and probably not even in ten...' 'The kolkhozes (collective farms) and the communes,' he wrote later, 'certainly are, and will not be for a long time, anything more than islands in the middle of the plots'... Indeed, at that time only 0.8% of farming families were part of collective farms.”
Optional. Bolshevik ideas �after War Communism. The NEP
Lenin. “ Five Years of the Russian Revolution and Prospects for the World Revolution . ” Collected Works , Volume 45, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/lenin/obras/1922/noviembre/13.htm
“Having emphasized that as early as 1918 we considered state capitalism as a possible line of retreat, I will now analyze the results of our new economic policy. I repeat: at that time it was still a very vague idea; but in 1921, after having overcome the most important stage of the civil war, and having overcome it victoriously, we were faced with a major internal political crisis—I suppose the greatest—in Soviet Russia. This internal crisis laid bare the discontent not only of a considerable portion of the peasantry, but also of the workers. It was the first time, and I trust it will be the last in the history of Soviet Russia, that large masses of peasants were against us, not consciously, but instinctively, due to their state of mind. What was the cause of this unprecedented and, of course, unpleasant situation for us? The cause was that we had advanced too far in our economic offensive, that we had not secured a sufficient base, that the masses felt what we were not yet able to articulate at that time.” consciously, but very soon, a few weeks later, we recognized that the direct step to purely socialist forms, to purely socialist distribution, was beyond our capabilities, and that if we were not in a position to scale back and limit ourselves to easier tasks, bankruptcy would threaten us. The crisis began, in my opinion, in February 1921. By the spring of that same year, we had unanimously decided—on this matter I observed no major disagreements among us—to move to the new economic policy. Today, after a year and a half, at the end of 1922, we are already in a position to make some comparisons […]
The data cited prove that since last year, when we began implementing our new economic policy, we have already learned to move forward, […] The most important thing, however, is trade, the movement of goods, which is essential for us. […] Practice shows that, in this area, we have achieved decisive results: we have begun to move our economy toward stabilizing the ruble, which is of extraordinary importance for trade, for the free movement of goods, for farmers, and for the vast number of small producers.
[---] In 1921, the discontent of a vast part of the peasantry was undeniable. Moreover, famine broke out. And this represented the most severe ordeal for the peasants. And it is quite natural that everyone abroad began to shout: “There you have the results of socialist economics!” It is quite natural, of course, that they remained silent about the fact that famine was, in reality, a monstrous consequence of the civil war. All the landowners and capitalists, who descended upon us in 1918, presented things as if famine were a consequence of socialist economics. Famine has indeed been an immense and grave calamity, a calamity that threatened to destroy all our organizing and revolutionary work.
And I ask now: after this unprecedented and unexpected calamity, how are things today, after the implementation of the new economic policy, after granting the peasants freedom of trade? The answer, clear and evident to all, is this: in one year, the peasants have overcome hunger and, moreover, have paid the tax in kind in such a quantity that we have already received hundreds of millions of puds , and almost without applying any coercive measures. The peasant uprisings, which before 1921 were, so to speak, a general phenomenon in Russia, have almost completely disappeared. […]
[…] light industry is undoubtedly on the rise, and the improvement in the situation of the workers in Petrograd and Moscow is undeniable. In the spring of 1921, discontent reigned among the workers in both cities. Today, this is entirely absent. We, who observe the situation and the mood of the workers on a daily basis, are not mistaken in this regard.
[…] The truth is that our heavy industry is still in a very difficult situation. But I suppose the decisive factor is that we are now in a position to save something. And so we will continue to do so. Although this is often done at the expense of the population, today we must, despite everything, economize. We are now focused on reducing the state budget, on reducing the size of the civil service. I will say a few words about our civil service later. In any case, we must reduce it; we must economize as much as possible. We economize on everything, even schools. And this must be so, because we know that without saving heavy industry, without restoring it, we will not be able to build any kind of industry, and without it we will perish completely as an independent country. We know this perfectly well.
[---] The most important thing for us was to prepare the socialist economy in economic terms. We were unable to prepare it directly and were forced to do so indirectly. State capitalism, as we have implemented it in our country, is a peculiar form of state capitalism. It does not correspond to the usual concept of state capitalism. We hold all the positions of power; we hold the land, which belongs to the state. This is very important, although our enemies present it as if it were insignificant. This is not true. The fact that the land belongs to the state is of extraordinary importance and, moreover, of great practical economic significance. We have achieved this, and I must state that all our subsequent activity must be carried out only within this framework. We have already succeeded in making our peasants satisfied and in revitalizing industry and commerce. I said earlier that our state capitalism differs from state capitalism, understood literally, in that the proletarian state holds not only the land but also the most important branches of industry. First of all, we have only leased out a certain portion of small and medium-sized industry; everything else remains in our hands. Regarding commerce, I want to emphasize that we are trying to create, and are already creating, mixed companies—that is, companies in which part of the capital belongs to private capitalists (foreigners, of course) and the other part belongs to us. First, in this way we learn how to trade, which we need, and second, we always have the option of closing these companies if we deem it necessary. So, so to speak, we risk nothing. Instead, we learn from private capitalists and observe how we can improve and what mistakes we make.
Lenin, Complete Works , Volume 43 https://archive.org/details/obras-completas-lenin-tomo43/page/251/ ,
Optional. Ideas of the Bolsheviks �after War Communism
Trotsky, The Soviet Economy in Danger , https://ceip.org.ar/La-economia-sovietica-en-peligro
“The conditions and methods of a planned economy
Which organizations are responsible for developing and implementing the plan? What methods will be used to monitor and regulate it? What conditions are necessary for it to succeed?
In this regard, three systems must be briefly analyzed: 1) the special state departments, that is, the hierarchical system of central and local planning commissions; 2) trade, as a system of market regulation; 3) Soviet democracy, as a system of real regulation by the masses of the structure of the economy.
If a universal mind existed, like the one projected in Laplace's scientific fantasy—a mind capable of simultaneously registering all the processes of nature and society, measuring the dynamics of their movement, and predicting the results of their reciprocal reactions—it could, of course, devise a perfect and exhaustive economic plan a priori, starting with the number of acres of wheat and ending with the last button on waistcoats. The bureaucracy often imagines it has such a mind at its disposal; that is why it so readily dispenses with market control and Soviet democracy. But in reality, the bureaucracy makes terrible errors in assessing its intellectual resources. In practice, it is necessarily forced to rely on the proportions (and, just as fairly, one might say, the disproportions) it inherited from capitalist Russia, on the data of the economic structure of contemporary capitalist nations, and finally on the successes and failures of the Soviet economy itself. But even the most accurate combination of all these elements will not yield anything more than an imperfect scheme.
The countless actors in the economy—state and private, collective and individual—will not only assert their needs and relative power through the statistical determinations of the plan but also through the direct pressure of supply and demand. The market controls and, to a considerable extent, implements the plan. Market regulation must depend on the trends that emerge from its very mechanism. Departmental drafts must demonstrate their economic effectiveness through commercial calculations. A transitional economic system is inconceivable without control of the ruble. This, in turn, presupposes a stable ruble. Without a firm monetary unit, commercial accounting can only exacerbate the chaos.
Lenin's writings from 1921 onwards are very interesting in this regard. For example:
On the Tax in Kind (Significance of the New Policy and its Conditions), Volume 43, pages 204 ff.; �Draft Resolution on Questions of the New Economic Policy , Volume 43, pages 340 ff.; �The New Economic Policy and the Tasks of the Committees of Political Instruction , Volume 44, pages 162 ff. �Report on the New Economic Policy , Volume 44, pages 200 ff. �Interview with A. Ransome , Correspondent for “ The Manchester Guardian” , Volume 45, page 275 ff. �Five Years of the Russian Revolution and Prospects for the World Revolution , Volume 45, page 295 ff.
Lenin, Collected Works , especially volumes 43, 44, and 45, �https://archive.org/search?query=Lenin+Complete+Works+Progress �https://www.marxists.org/espanol/lenin/obras/oc/progreso/index.htm
The five-year plans
Optional. Collectivization
Optional. Five-year plans
- Who needs a nail like this?
- Not at all! The main thing is that we immediately implemented the plan for the nails...
“Balance of the first five-year plan”, 1933, Works , vol. XIII, p. 85.
“Report to the XVII Congress of the Party …”, 1934, Works , vol. XIII, p. 132.
“The tasks of the leaders of the economy”, 1931, Works , vol. XIII, p. 16.
Optional. Stalin: Five-Year Plans and Trade
Oskar Lange, The Principles of Soviet Economics , 1944, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20854636
The five-year plans
Leontief , “ The decline and rise of Soviet economic science”, 1960, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20029416
Also in Essays on Economics , vol. I, page 223 et seq., https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pes5eth6td20cyo/AABXzCASszMFV0Eg5UF1Xkv8a/Leontief?e=1
Optional. The Great Terror
Stalin, Works , Volume XIV, “History of the Communist (Bolshevik) Party of the USSR” https://www.marxists.org/espanol/tematica/histsov/pcr-b/index.htm
“The year 1937 brought new information about the monsters of the Bukharinist -Trotskyist gangs. The trial against Pyatakov , Radek and others, the trial against Tukhachevsky, Yakir and others, and, finally, the trial against Bukharin , Rykov , Krestinski , Rosengoltz and the other defendants, made it clear that the Bukharinists and the Trotskyists had long been a common gang of enemies of the people, in the form of a 'right-wing-Trotskyist bloc'.”
The aforementioned trials highlighted that these dregs of humanity, in conjunction with the enemies of the people—Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev —were already conspiring against Lenin, the Party, and the Soviet state from the very first days of the October Socialist Revolution. The acts of provocation aimed at breaking the Treaty of Brest- Litovsk in early 1918; the plot against Lenin and the conspiracy with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to arrest and assassinate Lenin, Stalin, and Sverdlov in the spring of 1918; the criminal assassination attempt against Lenin, from which he emerged wounded, in the summer of 1918; the uprising of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the summer of the same year; the deliberate exacerbation of internal divisions within the Party in 1921, with the aim of undermining and overthrowing Lenin's leadership from within; The attempts to overthrow the Party leadership during Lenin's illness and after his death; the betrayal of state secrets and the provision of espionage reports to foreign intelligence services; the infamous assassination of Kirov ; acts of sabotage and diversionism , explosions; the infamous murders of Menzhinski , Kuibyshev , and Gorki: these and similar crimes were perpetrated over the course of twenty years with the involvement or under the direction of Trotsky, Zinoviev , Kamenev , Bukharin , Rykov , and their satellites, obeying orders from the foreign bourgeois intelligence services.
The aforementioned trials made it clear that the Trotskyist- Bukharinist monsters , in carrying out the orders of their masters, the foreign bourgeoisie's intelligence services, aimed to destroy the Soviet Party and State, undermine the country's defense, facilitate foreign armed intervention, prepare the defeat of the Red Army and the dismemberment of the USSR, handing over the Soviet Maritime Province to the Japanese, Soviet Belarus to the Poles, and Soviet Ukraine to the Germans, destroying the gains of the workers and collective bargainers , and restoring capitalist slavery in the USSR
These pygmy white guards, whose strength could only be compared to that of an insignificant mosquito, apparently believed themselves to be—it's laughable to say it!—the masters of the country and imagined that they could, in fact, dismember and sell Ukraine, Belarus and the Maritime Province to the highest bidder.
These counter-revolutionary mosquitoes forgot that the master of the land of the Soviets is the Soviet People and that Messrs. Rykov , Bukharin , Zinoviev and Kamenev were nothing more than mere temporary servants of the State, whom it could sweep out of its offices at any time, like useless garbage.
These insignificant lackeys of the fascists forgot that the Soviet People only had to lift a finger to make them disappear completely.
The Soviet Tribunal condemned the Bukharinist -Trotskyist monsters to be shot.
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was responsible for carrying out the sentence.”
Collectivization and five-year plans
De-Stalinization
Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), Secret Report to the 20th Congress of the CPSU , 1956, https://www.marxists.org/espanol/khrushchev/1956/febrero25.htm
Soviet Congress Criticises Stalin Aka Twentieth Congress Of The Communist Party (1956), https://youtu.be/d_zqeFOuaEU
The economy remained focused on the means of production and militarized, but from Khrushchev onwards there was greater attention to consumer goods and even an incipient welfare state.
Khrushchevkas " were built —very modest family apartments that greatly improved people's lives—in contrast to the communal houses under Lenin and Stalin where each family occupied a single room and had to share the kitchen and bathroom. Khrushchev believed that the USSR could surpass the US in living standards and that communism would thus demonstrate its superiority over capitalism ("We will bury them!").
Five-year plans. �Reform policies
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)
Alexei Kosygin (1904-1980)
Gorbachev: Perestroika was necessary
https://www.elperiodico.com/es/opinion/20070409/perestroika-necesaria-5440949
“A question asked sincerely deserves a sincere answer. Indirectly, the question constitutes a criticism of perestroika (restructuring) and of everything we did in our country, and throughout the world, during that period. I do not agree with that criticism.”
I began promoting perestroika in the mid-1980s as a policy of restructuring and reforming the economic, political, and social systems of the USSR. Such a shift was necessary in our country, primarily for internal reasons. We were living within a system whose basic structures had been established by Joseph Stalin. The lack of democracy and freedom stifled its future.
The thaw initiated by Nikita Khrushchev after the twentieth congress of the CPSU in 1956, and the economic reforms of his successor, Alexei Kosygin's proposals, introduced in 1965 and aimed at creating incentives for people to take initiative, were attempts to address the need for real change. But both programs were thwarted.
The Soviet Union's ruling class feared any innovation and, under the pretext of defending the advantages of socialism, stifled the country's development, blocking any reforms. However, by the mid-1980s, it became clear that pushing Soviet society down the Stalinist path was a dead end. The awareness that "we couldn't go on living like this" was widespread.
I now recall a conversation I had in March 1985 with Andrei Gromyko , Foreign Minister and Politburo member, on the eve of my election as General Secretary. I asked him if he believed it was necessary to promote far-reaching changes in the USSR. He replied that the changes "could no longer be postponed," and that both Soviet society and the socialist camp urgently needed them. I told him that we were all aware of how difficult everything was going to be, but we had to act. Change was long overdue. Gromyko replied that he completely agreed with me.
The person asking the question believes we should have preserved and strengthened the advantages of the Soviet system and corrected its shortcomings. That is precisely what we tried to do from the outset, by proposing that scientific and technological advances be used to accelerate the country's development. But the first two years of perestroika showed that the Stalinist economic and political mechanisms had become so rigid and rusty that any significant progress was impossible without changing them. The conservative nomenklatura, the party, and the government bureaucracy, who considered perestroika a passing phase, obstructed the reforms. Their argument might well have been this: "We survived Khrushchev and Kosygin ; we will survive Gorbachev too."
The force capable of breaking that resistance was the people. We had to give them an opportunity to participate in the process of change. For this reason, we took the radical step of implementing large-scale reform and general democratization. In essence, perestroika was a project of social democracy.
The success of our plans was not complete. Reforming the USSR, with its enormous militarized economy and multiethnic population, presented a highly complex challenge. We made mistakes: sometimes by acting too late, other times by forcing the pace. The catastrophic collapse in oil prices—from $25 a barrel to as low as $10 a barrel in 1986—severely impacted the economic and social plans of perestroika.
In August 1991, the reactionary opponents of perestroika staged a coup. They deployed troops and isolated me in Crimea. They tried to turn back the clock to the pre-perestroika era . They were in a great hurry because a new Union Treaty was to be signed just a few days later.
The coup failed. Its organizers were arrested. However, it dealt a severe blow to perestroika: the Union Treaty was not signed, and my credibility and influence, as well as that of the new democratic institutions, were undermined. This paved the way for another group of perestroika opponents: the radical pseudo-democrats led by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. By destroying our union, they brought tragedy to millions of their citizens, who overnight became citizens of other states. The Yeltsin era was the negation of perestroika, not its continuation. It brought a decline in production and deep divisions in society, an immense gap between the wealth of the few and widespread poverty.
The lesson we must learn from the 20th century is that people have rejected both Stalinist socialism, devoid of democracy and freedom, and the unfettered capitalism of the Yeltsin years. Nevertheless, the main benefits of perestroika—democratic freedoms and economic and political pluralism—have been safeguarded. Russia is now forging its path toward a free and just society.
Perestroika also deserves credit for paving the way for the end of the Cold War. Many nations were given the opportunity to freely choose their future. We buried in the past the danger of nuclear holocaust, which would have rendered any dialogue about alternative ways of developing society pointless.
I agree with the reader who asks about the rejection of a unipolar world. But I feel no nostalgia for confrontation, and even less for a world divided into hostile factions. If we take a look at the world today, it is clear that it does not have—nor can it be—a single pole. Attempts to create a new empire have failed. Although reluctantly, even the United States must recognize that unilateral policies of force do not work.
I am convinced that policies based on this new way of thinking, which helped end the Cold War, will ultimately prevail. Both the conservative right and the left—committed to socialist priorities—should reflect on the lessons of the 20th century. The right must finally realize that policies that further widen the gap between rich and poor are a recipe for a disastrous social explosion, the first signs of which are already visible in various parts of the world. As for the left, it must learn to resist the temptations of authoritarianism, which discredits any socialist idea, and abandon the illusion of state omnipotence. The alternative it proposes must be democratic.
I trust that this 21st century will be a century of democratic rivalry between approaches that will compete for the development of society. Perestroika, which sought greater freedom and justice, and a dignified life for all, offered a genuine alternative. It is still valid. I am convinced that the future will prove it.
Real socialisms. Other models
Real socialisms. Other models
Optional. Cooperatives, communes, kibbutzim
Optional. Yugoslavia
Dilas and Tito
Optional. The Prague Spring
Other references