Towards Socialism or Capitalism? (Routledge Revivals)

Leon Trotsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136242359
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First Published in 1926, Towards Socialism or Capitalism? considers how the socialised economy of Soviet Russia, isolated in a capitalist world after Lenin's death, faced acute dangers. Trotsky and the Left Opposition alone fought the Stalinist degeneration of the state and party apparatus which threatened to open the door to capitalist restoration. The three articles in this book, written between 1925 and 1932, discuss the fundamental problems of the Soviet economy from the New Economic Policy to forced collectivization. Published here in one volume, they are indispensable steps in the development of Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Union, laid down in 1936 in 'The Revolution Betrayed'.

TOWARDS SOCIALISM OR CAPITALISM?

I

THE LANGUAGE OF FIGURES

I

THE State Planning Commission has published the control figures of the Soviet national economy for the financial year 1925-1926. This may sound dry and bureaucratic, but in the dry columns of figures and in the equally dry explanations of them, we can hear the glorious music of socialism in growth. Here, we no longer have conjectures, propositions, hopes, theoretic speculations ; here we have the weighty tongue of numbers, convincing even to the New York Stock Exchange. We will pause at these figures, at the most important of them, for they are fully worth it.

First of all, the very fact of their publication is a glorious event for us. The day on which they appeared (20th August) should be marked on the Soviet calendar. Agriculture, industry home and foreign trade, the volume of money in circulation, prices of commodities, credit operations, the State budget, are all shown in these figures in the process of their development and correlation. We have here a clear and comprehensible comparison of all the important figures for 1913, for 1924-1925, and the estimates for the year 1925-1926. The explanatory notes give all the necessary data for the other years of the Soviet economy. As a result, we receive a general picture of our process of construction, as well as an estimate for the succeeding financial year. That this has been possible is an achievement of the first order.

Socialism is a balance sheet. Only, under the New Economic Policy the forms of it are different from those we attempted to adopt under Militant Communism. The latter can only find full expression under socialism completely realised. But socialism is a matter of balance sheet even now, and under the New Economic Policy still more than under complete socialism, for then the contents of the balance sheet will be purely economic, whereas now it is bound up with the most complicated political problems. And here, in this table of control figures, the socialist state is for the first time taking stock of all the branches of its economic system in their correlation and development. Its very possibility is a sure sign of concrete economic success, as well as of a growing ability to calculate, to generalise, and to lead in economics. The control figures may be regarded as a sort of matriculation. We must bear in mind however, that matriculation is not equal to graduation. It is only the passage from secondary to higher education.

When we look at the figures, the first question that arises is, how far are they correct ? In this respect, there is a wide field for reserves, restrictions, and even scepticism. We know that our statistics and figures are often inaccurate, not so much because of less efficiency than is to be found in other branches of our economic and cultural activities, but because they reflect all, or at least, many aspects of our backwardness. This however, does not justify a wholesale disbelief in them in the hope that in a year or two perhaps, one might be able to show up some error in one or other of the figures and pose as being wise after the event. There will most probably be many errors, but wisdom after the event is the very cheapest of all wisdom. For the moment, the figures of the State Planning Commission give the utmost approximation to truth. Why ? For three reasons. First of all, they are founded on the most complete material available, and material moreover, which has not been obtained from the outside, but has been evolved day in, day out, by the different sections of the Commission itself. Secondly, the material has passed through the hands of the most competent and qualified economists, statisticians, and engineers, and thirdly, the work has been carried out by an institution which is free from all departmental partiality and can always confront the different departments when necessary.* There are moreover, no commercial and no economic secrets generally for the State Planning Commission, for it has the right to verify either directly or through the Workers’ and Peasants’ Control Department any productive process or trade account. All balance sheets are open to its inspection, as well as departmental estimates, and not merely from their show-front but from their rough draft. Some of the figures, of course, are bound to be disputed one way or another by the different departments. The objections, whether accepted or refuted, may seriously influence the work to be done for current practical purposes, such as import and export operations or the allocation of revenues for economic needs etc., but such adjustments will not affect the figures in the main. Figures more reliable, or more carefully weighed and examined than the control figures of the State Planning Commission cannot be had at the present time. At any rate, even provisional figures, based on all the preceding work, are infinitely preferable to working in the dark. In the first place, we make our adjustments as a result of experience and thus learn something, in the second, we are living in a haphazard way.

The control figures take us to the 1st October, 1926. This means that in about twelve months, when we shall be in possession of the actual figures for the financial year, 1925-26, we shall be able to compare our activities of to-morrow with our provisional estimates of to-day. No matter how widely the two may differ, the comparison of the figures will in itself be invaluable as a lesson in planned economics.

When we speak of the accuracy of the provisional estimates, we must first of all clearly understand of what kind the estimates are. When the statisticians of, let us say, the Howard Institute of America, try to determine the tendencies or the rate of growth of different branches of American economics, they proceed to some extent like the astronomers—they try to grasp the dynamics of processes completely outside their control, with the difference only that statisticians do not possess anything like the precise methods of astronomers. The position of our statisticians is, in principle, a different one. They are on the staff of organisations which take an active lead in economics. An estimate is not a passive thing, but a lever of positive economic provision. Each figure is not only a photograph, but also an order. The control figures have been prepared by a state institution having (and to what an extent !) the higher commands of economics. When the figures say that our exports have to increase from 462,000,000 roubles to 1,200,000,000 roubles in the financial year, 1925-26, that is to say, by 160 per cent., it is not merely a forecast but a definite objective to be obtained. On the basis of what is, the figures show what has to be done. When the figures say that the amount of capital to be put into industry, i.e. the cost of reconstruction and expansion of basic capital is to be 900,000,000 roubles, it is again not a passive estimation, but a practical task of the greatest importance, based on statistics. Such is the table of control figures from beginning to end. It is a dialectical combination of theoretic anticipation with practical insight, the consideration of objective conditions and tendencies together with subjective conception of economic problems on the part of the Workers’ and Peasants’ State. Herein lies the great difference between the control table of the State Planning Commission and the figures and all sorts of estimates of any capitalist State. Herein, as we shall see later, lies the immense superiority of our, that is to say, socialistic methods, to those of capitalism.

The control estimates of the State Planning Commission provide however, not so much a statistical appraisement of socialist economic methods in general, as the adaptation of these methods to the particular needs of the stage we have reached in our New Economic Policy. The elemental processes of economics specially admit of objective statistical treatment. In their turn, the economic processes directed by the State, emerge on the market at one stage or another and market methods bring them in contact with the uncontrolled processes produced by the split-up condition of peasant agriculture. State planning at the present moment largely consists in combining the controlled and directed processes with the uncontrolled elemental processes of the market. In other words, in our economics, socialist tendencies in varying stages of development are combined and interwoven with capitalist tendencies, also in varying stages of maturity and immaturity. The control figures connect certain processes with others and thus establish the equilibrium of development. This is the main importance of a provisional plan for socialism.

That the economic processes developing in our country are of a deeply opposite nature, representing a struggle between two systems mutually excluding each other—between socialism and capitalism—we have always known and never attempted to hide. On the contrary, at the very moment when we passed to the New Economic Policy, Lenin put the gist of the position clearly in his historic question “Which is going to score ?” Menshevist theoreticians, Otto Bauer to begin with, condescendingly hailed the New Economic Policy as a sober capitulation of premature Bolshevist violent methods of socialist economics to tried and reliable capitalism. The fears of some and the hopes of others have been seriously tested, and the result is given in the control figures of our social and economic estimates. The great significance of the estimate lies in the fact that speculation on the socialist and capitalist elements of our economics, on plans and conditions generally is no longer possible. We have taken stock of our resources, it may be roughly and provisionally, but we have quantitatively determined the relation between capitalism and socialism in our economics, and have done this for to-day and to-morrow. Thanks to this, we have obtained valuable, concrete material for a reply to the historic query, “Which is going to score?”

II

All that has so far been said merely relates to the principle of the control figures of the State Planning Commission. We have shown the enormous importance for us of having at last achieved the possibility of estimating the basic processes of our economics in their correlation and development and of thus having obtained a vantage ground for an infinitely more conscious and provident planning policy, and that not only in the sphere of our economics. But what is of greater importance to us, of course, is the actual content of the control estimates, that is to say, the figures which indicate our social development.

In order to receive a proper answer to the question, “Are we going towards socialism or capitalism ?” we must, first of all, properly formulate the question itself. It naturally divides into three subsidiary questions: (a) Are our productive forces developing ? (b) What are the social forms of this development ? (c) At what rate does the development proceed ?

The first question is the simplest of all and at the same time the most fundamental. Neither capitalism nor socialism are thinkable without the development of productive forces. Militant Communism which grew out of historic iron necessity, was soon played out, having stopped the development of the productive forces. The most rudimentary and the most imperative principle of the New Economic Policy was to develop the productive forces as a basis for social development in general. The New Economic Policy was greeted by the bourgeoisie and the Menshevists as an indispensable, but, of course, “inadequate” step towards the liberation of the productive forces. Menshevist theoreticians of the Kautsky and Otto Bauer type approved the New Economic Policy. They regarded it as the dawn of a capitalist restoration in Russia. They added that the New Economic Policy would either break the Bolshevik dictatorship (a happy issue), or the Bolshevik dictatorship would break the New Economic Policy (an unhappy issue). Converts to Bolshevism* from the opponents’ ranks were at the outset chiefly attracted by the supposition that the New Economic Policy would ensure the development of the productive forces along capitalist lines. It is here that the control figures of the State Planning Commission provide fundamental elements for an answer to the question, not only regarding the development of the productive forces in general, but as to the lines this development is taking.

We are well aware, of course, that the social form of our economic development is dual, being founded both on collaboration and on the struggle between capitalist and socialist methods, forms and aims. Such are the conditions our development has been placed in by the New Economic Policy. In fact, they form the very essence of the New Economic Policy. We can, however, no longer be satisfied by such a general conception of the contradictory forces of our development. We need and demand the most accurate coefficients for our economic contradictions, not only the dynamic coefficients of our general development, but the relative coefficients of the weight of the one or other tendency. On the answer to this question a great deal, even everything, depends, in our home as well as our foreign policy.

In order to approach the question from its sharpest angle we will say that without an answer to the question concerning the relative strength of capitalist and socialist tendencies and the direction in which the relative strength of each is modified in accordance with the growth of the productive forces, we cannot arrive at a clear and precise estimation of the chances and possible dangers of our peasant policy. As a matter of fact, if it should happen that in the development of our productive forces capitalist tendencies were growing at the expense of socialist tende...