On Trotskyism - Political Economy - IC

Political Economy

The League for a Workers' Republic was asked in Limerick to explain the difference between Stalinist and Trotskyist political economy. The gist of a confused answer by Basil Miller was that there was no difference. We fear that Mr . Miller does Trotsky an injustice by attributing Stalinist political economy to him. In fact Trotsky brilliantly anticipated the major development in modern anti-Stalin­ ist political economy. And we cannot permit Mr. Miller to rob Trotsky of that honour. We refer to the notion contained in Trotsky's SOVIET ECONOMY IN DANGER, (1933). This pamphlet deals with the first Five Year Plan which was then transforming the Soviet economy.

In the mid-twenties Trotsky had declared the building of socialism in Russia to be impossible . In 1933 he wrote: "Socialism, as a system, for the first time demonstrated its title to victory not on the pages of "Das Capital" but by the praxis of hydro-electric plants and blast furnaces". If socialism is domonstrating its "title to historic vic­ tory" in the industrialisation of the Five Year Plan, that industria­ lisation must be socialist, you might reason. But not at all: "• .•light-minded assertions to the effect that the U.S.S.R .has al­ ready entered into socialism are criminal".(p7) So socialism' s "title to victory" is demonstrated in industrialisation which it would be criminal to call socialist. Figure that out if you can.

Furthermore : "The difference between the socialist and capitalist tempos of industrial development...astonishes one by its sweep. But it would be a mistake to consider as final the Soviet tempos of the past few years " (p37) So, even though it would be "criminal" to describe Soviet industrialisation as socialist, it has, nevertheless, a socialist "tempo". That 's what the man says. God knows what it means.

Here is a further clue: "The laws that govern the transitional soc­ iety are quite different from those that govern capitalism. But no less do they differ from the future laws of socialism, that is, of harmonious economy." (p37) The Soviet economy, then , was not capital­ ist and was not socialist, but was transitional. What does "transi­ tional" mean? It is certain that production relations of a definite nature existed in Soviet industry. "Transitional" does not describe class relations in production .

Production relations must be capitalist, socialist feudal, slave or some other kind hitherto unknown . Slave and feudal relations can be ruled out. Even in their wildest rantings about slave labour camps, imperialist propagandists have not attributed the immense achievements of t:he Smd et t.!cOnomy i... slave obur. l roLsky says it was transi­ L J.l na L ; which is meaningless. Definitly. production relat ions existed .

Trotsky maintained that the non-socialist, non-capitalist Soviet economy, with its transitional eocnomy and socialist tempo, was rid­ dled with major contradictions which were building up to a major crisis .

Basil Miller declared that " the law of val ue was not restricted under Stalin". Naturally, he gave no evidence of this. And in fact the disciple is very much out of key with the master. Trotsky condemned Stalin because he had restricted the law of value. He held the restriction of market relations to be at tbe basis of the supposed crisis in the Soviet economy :

"By eliminating the market and by installing instead Asiatic bazaars the bureaucracy has created, to consummate all else, the conditions for the most barbaric gurations of prices, and consequently has placed a mine under commercial calculation. As a result, the economicchaos has been redoubled." (p34)

1'The regulation of the market itself must depend upon the ten­ dencies that are brought out through its medium. The blue­ prints produced by the offices must demonstrate their economic expediency through commercial calculation. The system of transitional economy is unthinkable without the control of the ruble . This pre-supposes, in its turn, that the ruble is at par. Without a firm monetary unit, commercial accounting can only increase the chaos .11 (pJ0/31).

The market must not be eliminated, because outside the market there is chaos. Plans must justify themselves commercially, i.e. in terms of sound market relations . The market must be regulated by means of the market: by financial control . This indicates that Trotsky's "transitional economy" is nothing but a modern capitalist economy, with its plans based on market relations, and its "regulation of

the market" by means of "tendencies that are brought out through its medium".

A G R I C u L T u R E

As well as demanding market relations in industry, Trotsky demanded the restoration of "Kulak" capitalism in agriculture . (Kulaks are peasant bourgeoi­ sie, equivalent to the big farmers who emerged from the Irish peas­ antry after the Land Acts.) The greater part of the land had been collectivised and the main power of the kulaks had been smashed by 1933. Trotsky declared: "100% coll ectivisa tion has resulted in 100% overgrowth of weeds on the fields"(p23). Which is another absurd Trotskyist phrase . If collectivisation had resulted in a decline in agricultural production the illllllense expansion of industrial production that went on all through the thirties would have been impossible. Without a substantial increase in agricultural production it would have been impossible . That is an elementary economic fact. An expanding industrial sector cannot be based on a declining or stagnant agricultural sector, (unless it is based on agricultural imports, which was not the case in the U.S.S.R.).

Agricultural production did not grow in the remarkable way that in­ dustrial production did . This was due in part to natural causes. Marx explained at length in Capital why the organisation of agricul­ tural production is more difficult than the organisation of industrial production . For one thing, nature plays a role in agriculture that it does not play in industry. Secondly, it was due to social causes. The collectives were made up mostly of small and middle peasants, not workers. As Lenin explained, they could contribute to the build­ ing of socialism if there was determined working class leadership.

In the long run they could be changed from peasants into workers. But for a considerable time they would remain peasants, a vacillating class whose contribution to the building of socialism could proceed only under the pressure of the working class. Leaving aside natural causes, this fact would make the development of socialist agriculture proceed more slowly than the development of socialist industry.

But to develop more slowly is not to decline. If there had been '100% overgrowth of weeds" as a result of collectivisation, the in­ dustrialisation that took place could not have taken place .

"The policy of mechanically 'liquidating the kulak' is now factually discarded (?). A cross should be placed over it officially. And simultaneously it is necessary to establish the policy of severely restricting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak." (p47)

The policy of eliminating the class of capitalist farmers was certainly not discarded . The 'New Economic Policy' (1921)had freed market relations and capitalist production. This was made necessary by  the total disruption of production during the wars of intervention. During the twenties a powerful class of capitalist farmers developed. It was mainly in capitalist farming, and not in small farming, that the agricultural commodities for the towns were produced. In the late twenties the capitalist farmers began to assert themselves as a class. In a bid to extend their power they began to hold the towns to ransom, and a virtual state of war existed. The choice was to allow the kulaks to extend their power , and give them a stranglehold on socialism , or to wage a class war against them. Millions of small peasants and agricultural labourers took up the struggle against the kulaks under industrial working class leadership, and began the colle­ ctive organisation of agriculture. 40,000 industrial workers went into the country to direct collectivisation .

Trotsky's notion of ''restricting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak" is a bureaucratic fantasy. The kulaks were making a bid to free themselves of the restrictions imposed upon them. It was a matter of conceding to them or smashing them as a class. Since kulak production was the main source of agricultural goods for the towns, and since they were using th.is position as a lever against the working class, it was a question of allowing them to free themselves from socialist restrictions as a condition for contin­ uingko supply the towns, or of carrying out an extensive social reorganisation of agricultural production from which the kulak class was eliminated. "Restriction " was a thing of the past.

When the struggle against the kulaks was taken up in 1929 it was not let up until they were eliminated as a class. Like any real struggle it had its periods of intensification and relaxation, its adventurist offensives and its tactical retreats. The Trotskyist method of "criticism" was to take one of these incidents of the struggle and represent it as the main thing. Any real struggle has a certain zig-zag character, as Lenin often explained. Trotsky drew attention to zig-zags in the Stalin period and maintained that they were proof of Stalin 's "empiricism". But only a brureaucrat (and Lenin frequently drew attention to Trotsky's bureaucratic out­ look) could imagine that a real struggle could proceed in accordance with some preconeived blueprint . All that can be established beforehand are the main lines of struggle and the main outlines of strategy.

"...correct, and econoically sound, collectivisation, at given stage, should nof o elimination of the N.E.P. (New Ekonomic Policy), but to the gradual reorganisation of its methods ." (p32)

The capitalist farmers declare war on socialism . When the working class resists they engage in sabotage . When collectivisation begins they carry out a massive destruction of crops and slaughter of cattle. A state of actual civil war exists . How do you proceed gradually in that situation? How are the kulaks to be converted to Fabian socialism? How do you go about a gradual reorganisation of the NEP when the NEP bas been disrupted by the war of the capital­ ist farmers against working class control? There is no answer from Trotsky to these little questions. 

In 1933, Trotsky demands the restoration of market relations in industry, with "plans" derived from the market, and "control"being exercised through financial manoeuvering. The market must only be "regulated" by market methods . In agriculture he demands the restoration of capitalist kulak production.

MARKET SOCIALISM

On the general question of market relations and socialism, Trotsky wrote: 

"If there existed the universal mind that projected itself into the scientific fantasy of Laplace ..., such a mind could, of course, draw up a priori a faultless and exhaustive econ­ omic plan ... In truth, the bureaucracy often conceives that just such a mind is at its disposal; that is why it so easily frees itself from the control of the market and of Soviet dem­ ocracy. But in reality the bureaucracy errs frightfully in  this appraisal of its spiritual resources ..• The innumerable living participants of economy, State as well as private , coll­ ective as well as individual , must give notice of their needs and of their relative strength not only through the statistical determination of plan commissions but by the direct pressure of supply and demand . The plan is checked and to a considerable extent realised through the market."

"Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations." (p33)

When building socialist industry, "Stalinism" did not base it on mar­ ket relations. Socialist production is non-market production consciously organised by the working class to meet social needs.

Trotsky declared it to be impossible at the very time when it was being built in practice .

The economic achievement of the Soviet Union between the 1930's and the 1950's could not possibly have occurred if Trotsky's market soci­ alist notions had been the guiding theory.

To show the impossibility of Marxist socialism (or Stalinism) Trotsk:· cited examples of disproportions resulting from planning faults which were published in the Soviet press. He saw these as signs of the impending crisis. In fact they were the natural teething troubles of a new system . They were remedied through improvements in -planning, not through financial manoeuvres. Planning methods had to be deve­ loped through trial and error. But the errors did not lead to comm­ ercial crises . There is no evidence of conuncrcial crises during the period of Stalinism. "Socialist " commercial crises only began to appear after Tito and Khruschev began to put into practice the market socialism reconnnended by Trotsky (following Proudhon and Duhring).

(In the modern revisionist manner, Trotsky observes: "...the ultim­ ate cost of economically irrational 'successes' surpasses as a rule many times the value of the successes."(pl4). If this means any­ thing, it means that there was waste in the Soviet economy many more times the amount of what was actually produced, and that with "ratio­nal" economics the growth rate would be multiplied. But it is now a matter of history that no market socialist economy has ever remotely approached the high and sustained rates of development that charact­ erised the Stalin period.)

In conclusion: the difference between Stalinist and Trotskyist poli­ tical economy , which Mr. Miller was so coy about, is that Stalin was a Marxist political economist and Trotsky was a market socialist .

Trotsky did not merely deny the possibility of building a socialist  economy in Russia : he denied the possibility of socialist economy in general.

(The Irish Communist , June 1970)

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