PRIVATE CAPITAL IN THE USSR -1927
State publishing house
Translated from the Original- no omissions
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(A unique book, recommended at one time by I.V. Stalin, which shows the dialectic of the NEP, how in practice the socialist way of economy destroyed the economically private-proprietary, capitalist way. In the post-Stalin USSR, it was kept in special depository, there was no free access to it. All the schemes that were then widely used by the new bourgeoisie during the period of Perestroika are described).
Contents
The
objective of the work – P5
Initial
formation of bourgeois capital in the USSR -P7
Agents
& accomplices of private capital in the state apparatus-P13
Pseudo-state
form of activity of private capital-P21
Malicious
contractors-P24
Illiquid
Funds. Road and water transport-P32
Predatory
rent- P38
Repurchase
System- P41
Smuggling-
P46
State
monetary credit- P54
Government
loans- P62
Foreign
exchange transactions- P69
Private
capital in agriculture- P77
Farming
with hired workers- P83
Capitalist
surrender of livestock and implements-P104
False
collective farms- P111
Entrepreneurial
organization of waste. Construction- P119
Overgrowth
and ideology- P132
Four
types of capitalist industry- P140
Gross
production. Industrial pseudo-cooperatives. Distribution offices.-P143
Private
capital in the production of consumer goods- P154
Employed
persons- P157
Capital
and accumulation- P162
Dynamics
and activities. Workers in capitalist industry. From the hidden to the obvious -P176
Private
Capital in Trade, Production,
and credit base-P209
Capitals
and the social structure of private trade- P212
Wholesale
and retail. City and village. -P228
The
rising cost of private trade. Economic and social
significance
of the problem of retail prices- P244
Private
Capital in the credit and money market.
The
amount of credit capital. -P293
Size
and net accumulation of private capital in general- P299
Private
capital and taxation
Private
capital in national property & annual accumulation. - P318
Classes,
incomes, taxation. -P325
Taxation
and opposition. -P347
Evolution
of private capital- P370
The
transitional period to socialism and the sprouts of capitalism. -P386
Features
of the USSR and the opposition. -P387
The
results of six years of experience- P389
Practical
setting for the coming years- P393
I.
The objective of the work
There is no disagreement that the study of one's enemies is no less necessary
than the study of one's own creative activity. There is no disagreement that
the role of the bourgeoisie in the national economy is one of the essential
obstacles in the matter of our internal construction, in the matter of
preparing for the full development of the socialist system. This role is much
greater than it might seem at first glance when looking at our state factories,
mills, and railways alone. If we take, for example, the totality of wage labor
in our country, then, according to recently made calculations in the
"Control Figures" of the State Planning Commission, of all wage
workers and employees in our country, 28% are employed by private individuals,
and these calculations are still underestimated. Taken there, for example, the
number of agricultural workers is much smaller than according to the data of
Vserabotzemles, so this is the minimum that can be discussed. Of all the hired workers
and employees in our country, up to 30% still work in private households and
enterprises. Already by this figure alone, one can judge the significance of
the phenomenon in question.
It must be emphasized that we will be talking specifically about the role of
private capital, and by no means about the private economy in general. In our
country, quite often people speak completely uncritically, for example, about
private industry in general. Meanwhile, there is private capitalist industry,
organized by bourgeois capital, which is a form of bourgeois accumulation and
based on the exploitation by bourgeois capital of the labor power it employs.
And there is private labor industry, which is simple commodity production
without the exploitation of other people's labor, based solely on the
expenditure of the small handicraftsman's and craftsman's own labor power
without hired workers. Both of these forms are different socio-economic
categories, different social and economic strata, and it is wrong to confuse them
together when judging private capital. The same is true in other branches of
the economy; everywhere it is necessary to single out the capitalist part of
the private economy as a whole in order to judge the relative weight of the
capitalist bourgeoisie in our economy.
There
is an enormous amount of material on the question of private capital—there is
hardly anything we write and talk about more than this—but this material is not
systematized, not brought together into a single whole, not sufficiently generalized.
First, to bring together the material that is available on the origin of
bourgeois capital in the Soviet country, to classify the several types and
types of primitive bourgeois accumulation in the period 1921-1924. (partly in a
weakened form preserved to this day). Secondly, to give, without any glossing
over and exaggeration (such as the substitution of private capital by private
economy in general), a picture of its current role in industry, agriculture, trade,
and the money market, taking into account, if possible, also the disguised
forms of its activity. Thirdly, our task is to make those generalizations that
can be made on the basis of an analysis of the development of private capital
in recent years.
The work is based on three reports read by me at the Communist Academy on March
19 - April 16, 1927.
The materials that are used in this are mainly as follows.
Under various people's commissariats and institutions, commissions were formed
to study private capital in our country, collecting information about its
activities in various sectors. The relevant reports and data were then
submitted to the commission on private capital, which worked under the
chairmanship of Comrade Ordzhonikidze with my participation from December 1926
to May 1927. These are the materials I use in the first place. The second,
source of this kind.
I asked in 1926; assistant prosecutor of the USSR comrade Kondurushkin to
develop materials of larger court cases that have been brought before the
courts of the republic in cases of economic crimes over the past six to seven
years. These materials provide many interesting comparisons. Comrade
Kondurushkin's work has now been completed and will soon be published by
Gosizdat. Thirdly, and finally, information kindly communicated to me
officially by various government agencies on special requests.
Initial formation of
bourgeois capital in the USSR
The Bourgeois capital did not completely disappear and did not stop its activity even at the
height of war communism. But the absolute value of the funds at his disposal
was comparatively small - the confiscation of capitalist property, carried out
by us in 1917-1919, was still too fresh and sufficiently thorough. Of course,
there was a certain amount of gold coins, precious stones, etc. hidden away.
But since they were in the hands of the capitalists, they were largely lying at
that time in anticipation of a better future, while spending on the purchase of
food for their owners, etc. The entrepreneurial activity of pre-revolutionary
capitalists in the era of war communism was reduced only to speculation in
depreciating pieces of paper of various denominations (tsarist, Duma, Kerensky,
canceled loans and shares, Soviet signs, etc. ) and foreign exchange (the
influx of which could not then be particularly large, which narrowed the scope
of speculation) and to the partial financing of bagging. Basically, the bagging
of the Civil War period was reduced to the trips of workers and peasants for
food for their own families. In an entrepreneurial way, with a network of
agents, etc. bagging began to be put more towards the end of this period.
Judging by estimates of the present cash flow of private capital in the country
and by tentative data on the rate of its accumulation, it is difficult to think
that the real entrepreneurial accumulation (on bagging, hard currency, etc.) of
the pre-revolutionary and newly created bourgeoisie together amounted to the
beginning of the new economic policy (1921) more than one hundred and fifty
million rubles. Rather, less. Moreover, including already here all the reserves
of cash gold that have survived from the bourgeoisie. A significant part of the
gold coins, rings, etc., left by the population. was hidden in general by
"little people" who were not engaged in any trade or other business.
The
history of the accumulation of bourgeois capital in such proportions that it
acquires some, albeit secondary, significance in the national economy of the
country, begins with us, therefore, only with the New Economic Policy, since
1921. Then, firstly, state bodies received the right to economic connection
with private entrepreneurs, and secondly, private individuals received the
right of economic entrepreneurship. At the same time, under the New Economic
Policy, a legal opportunity arose for those individual successful
handicraftsmen, small traders or peasants who had previously been prevented by
the conditions of war communism from developing into entrepreneurs of the
exploiting type.
We
created NEP, as you know, for both external and internal reasons. True,
external ones (the possibilities of an influx of foreign capital to improve our
economy) have so far not yielded much (although the results are gradually
increasing). But on the other hand, the internal ones have already fully
justified themselves. The economy of the country, which was resting after a
long war, began to rise rapidly in the commodity-market forms familiar to the
petty-bourgeois majority of the population. As the state economy strengthened
by virtue of this, we were able to invest increasingly socialist content in
commodity-market forms (the growth of state industry, industrialization in the
hands of the proletariat). But along the way, by virtue of the very restoration
of commodity-market forms, bourgeois entrepreneurship was also restored.
"We
didn't learn how to trade," said Comrade Semkov at the Moscow Provincial
Party Conference in 1921 to Comrade Lenin. The bourgeoisie has brought neither
large fresh funds of its own nor new commodity funds to revive the economy.
Commodity funds were in our hands, and the size of the bourgeois funds, as indicated,
were small. But the bourgeoisie brought with them the ability to move in the
conditions of commodity-market relations, and we were compelled to give them
our commodity funds and our means. Production (industrial) remained in our
hands (and agricultural production in the hands of the peasants), but the
market connection between different parts of the economy (and often even
between different state enterprises) fell into the hands of the bourgeoisie.
For this, of course, she generously rewarded herself, but for us it was
"payment for science". Only
as this “payment” accumulates among the bourgeoisie does it begin to take some
roots, firstly, in production, secondly, in organizing trade at its own expense
(and not only through the legal and illegal use of state funds and state
credit), in- the third - in the money market.
Since
in the first period of this activity the bourgeoisie had no means of its own to
advance the commodity funds of the state, or there were too few of them, the
very nature of the use of its "skill" must have very often been
illegal or semi-legal, and bourgeois accumulation must have been typically
predatory accumulation, i.e., e. in no way proportional (even according to the
bourgeois assessment) of the services it provides. The history of the Soviet
bourgeoisie is thus quite simple. Her ability to rotate in market conditions
was needed, especially for the first period, while we were almost completely
unable to do this; she thus obtained the opportunity to act and, having no
means of her own, took advantage of the opportunity to steal them from us, from
the state; and nakravshi - then created independent trade at its own expense
and capitalist industrial entrepreneurship. The history of bourgeois
accumulation in the USSR in its first period is, therefore, first and foremost
the history of bourgeois theft in various shapes and forms. And then it starts
bourgeois accumulation of the usual type.
In
parallel, a narrow circle of small capitalist entrepreneurs was growing out of
simple commodity production in the countryside.
In
turn, the Soviet state, as it masters the art of maneuvering in the conditions
of commodity forms of economy, naturally begins to change its practical line
regarding private capital. Instead of the practice of "squandering"
1921-1923. the practice of "pushing aside" private capital from its
positions begins, primarily in the area of turnover with products of state
industry (1924-1926).
The
entire period of the New Economic Policy in relation to the history of private
capital must therefore be divided into three parts.
The
first period is
from 1921 to 1923. This is the period of the creation of modern private capital
in our country, plus the involvement in the life of some remnants of the
pre-revolutionary past that had not been in an active state until then.
The
second period is
the next three years, from 1924 to 1926. This is the time of the so-called
"normal" operation of private capital. Of course, in this second
period there were still many remnants (there are still to this day) of the
former illegal methods of making money, but those forms of his activity that
are based not on abuses, but on commercial transactions of a legal type are
already beginning to prevail.
And
the third period is the one that begins in 1927 and whose essence on the
part of the state is characterized by the current planned approach to the
question of private capital as a whole, and not only to individual
manifestations of its activity, such as trade in state products, etc. What
tendencies it is characterized by on the part of private capital - we will
dwell on this below.
The
first period is the period 1921-1923. - characterized mainly by the fact that
at that time private capital arose by transferring state funds into private
hands in a variety of ways and methods. It can be said that the bourgeoisie
that acted in the first period of NEP entered this NEP almost bare-handed, very
little, often with almost nothing in their souls, except their enterprise,
except for connections in various Soviet institutions, except for their
readiness to any crime for the sake of enrichment. The circumstance that it was
able to achieve rather great success along these paths, as we shall see, is, of
course, due in no small measure to the well-known defect in our state
apparatus. In other words, by those bureaucratic perversions the availability
of which made it possible, and sometimes still makes it possible, on the
economic front, for the private businessman to turn government agencies into
instruments and means of his own enrichment. The more the work of the state
apparatus of our country improves, the less this opportunity becomes, the more
the circle of illegal profit of private capital narrows, the more legal profit
comes to the fore.
Classifying
the methods of primitive bourgeois accumulation of this period, some of which
have survived to this day, I list 12 main types of predatory and illegal
emergence and accumulation of private capital. They gave him the opportunity by
the end of this period, approximately by 1923/24, to collect in his hands
already the sum of several hundred million rubles, with which he then began to
operate "normally" (having gradually added the remnants hidden and
partly accumulated in period of war communism).
Hidden
from pre-revolutionary times, the remnants, and accumulations of the period of
war communism from currency transactions and bagging can be counted, as I have
already indicated, in the hands of the bourgeoisie about 150 million. g., i.e.
about 350 million - all this was accumulated by private capitalists during the
first years of NEP as a result of their illegal activities.
The
main twelve types of this activity are as follows:
1)
agents and accomplices of private capital in the state apparatus,
2)
pseudo-state form of activity of private capital,
3)
malicious counterparty,
4)
illiquid funds,
5)
predatory rent,
6)
illegal repurchase,
7)
smuggling,
8) state money credit,
9)
state loans,
10)
foreign exchange transactions,
11)
tax evasion and
12) pseudo-cooperatives.
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