Stalin Quotes On sources of financing socialist construction
I think that we have two main sources feeding our industry: firstly, the working class and, secondly, the peasantry.
In capitalist countries, industrialization usually occurred mainly through the robbery of foreign countries, through the robbery of colonies or conquered countries, or through serious, more or less enslaving loans from outside.
You know that England has been collecting capital for hundreds of years from all colonies, from all parts of the world, and thus making additional investments in its industry. This, by the way, explains that England at one time turned into a “factory of the world.”
You also know that Germany developed its industry, among other things, due to the five billion indemnity taken from France after the Franco-Prussian War.
Our country, by the way, differs from capitalist countries in that it cannot and should not engage in the robbery of colonies and in general the robbery of foreign countries. Therefore, this path is closed to us.
But our country also does not have and does not want to have enslaving loans from outside. Consequently, this path is also closed to us.
What remains in this case? There is only one thing left: to develop industry, to industrialize the country through internal accumulation.
Under the bourgeois order in our country, industry, transport, etc. usually developed through loans. Whether you take the construction of new factories or the re-equipment of old ones, whether you take the construction of new railways or the construction of large power plants, not one of these enterprises could do without external loans. But these loans were enslaving.
Things are completely different here under the Soviet order. We are building a Turkestan railway 1,400 miles long, requiring hundreds of millions of rubles. We are building Dneprostroy, which also requires hundreds of millions. Do we have any kind of bonded loan here? No, we don't. We do all this through internal accumulation.
But where are the main sources of this accumulation? There are two of these sources, as I already said: firstly, the working class, which creates values and moves industry forward; secondly, the peasantry.
In this case, the situation with the peasantry is as follows: it pays the state not only ordinary taxes, direct and indirect, but it also overpays on relatively high prices for industrial goods - this, firstly, and more or less receives less on prices for industrial goods, agricultural products are, secondly.
This is an additional tax on the peasantry in the interests of boosting industry serving the entire country, including the peasantry. This is something like a “tribute”, something like a super tax, which we are forced to take temporarily in order to maintain and further develop the current rate of development of industry, to provide industry for the entire country, to further raise the well-being of the countryside and then to completely eliminate this additional tax, these “ scissors" between city and countryside.
This matter, needless to say, is unpleasant. But we would not be Bolsheviks if we glossed over this fact and turned a blind eye to the fact that, unfortunately, our industry and our country cannot do without this additional tax on the peasantry.
What should our policy be, then? It should consist in gradually weakening these “scissors”, bringing them closer from year to year, lowering the prices of industrial goods and raising agricultural technology, which cannot but lead to a reduction in the cost of bread production, so that later, in a number of years , completely eliminate this additional tax on the peasantry.
("On industrialization and the grain problem" vol. 11 pp. 157-160.)
What is it about in the well-known resolution of the joint meeting of the Politburo and the Presidium of the Central Control Commission (February 1929) on the issue of “scissors”? The point here is that, in addition to the usual taxes, direct and indirect, which the peasantry pays to the state, it also gives a certain supertax in the form of overpayments on manufactured goods and in the form of underpayments in the price of agricultural products.
Is it true that this supertax paid by the peasantry actually exists? Yes, that's right. What is our other name for it? We call it otherwise “scissors”, “pumping” funds from agriculture to industry for the rapid development of our industry.
Is this “pumping” necessary? We have no disagreement about the fact that this “pumping”, as a temporary measure, is necessary if we really want to maintain the rapid pace of industrial development. And we must maintain the rapid growth of industry at all costs, because it is needed not only for industry itself, but above all for agriculture, for the peasantry, who now most of all need tractors, agricultural machines, and fertilizers.
Can we kill this super tax now? Unfortunately, we can't. We must destroy it at the first opportunity, in the coming years. But we cannot destroy it now.
So, this supertax, obtained as a result of the “scissors,” constitutes “something like a tribute.” Not a tribute, but “something like a tribute.” This is “something like a tribute” for our backwardness. This super tax is needed in order to advance the development of industry and put an end to our backwardness.
Doesn't this mean that by taking this additional tax we are thereby exploiting the peasantry? No, it doesn't mean that. The nature of Soviet power does not allow any kind of exploitation of the peasantry by the state. The speeches of our comrades at the July plenum directly stated that under Soviet conditions, exploitation of the peasantry is excluded by the socialist state, because the continuous growth of the well-being of the working peasantry is the law of development of Soviet society, and this excludes any possibility of exploitation of the peasantry.
Is this additional tax feasible for the peasantry? Yes, Why?
Because, firstly, the collection of this additional tax occurs in conditions of continuous improvement of the financial situation of the peasantry.
Because, secondly, the peasant has his own personal farm, the income from which gives him the opportunity to pay an additional tax, which cannot be said about the worker who does not have a personal farm and who, despite this, devotes all his strength to the cause of industrialization.
Because, thirdly, the amount of additional tax decreases from year to year.
Are we doing the right thing by calling this additional tax “something like a tribute”? Certainly correct. These words convey to our comrades the odiousness, the undesirableness of the additional tax and the inadmissibility of maintaining it for a long time. By calling the additional tax on the peasantry this way, we want to say that we take it not out of desire, but out of need, that we, the Bolsheviks, must take all measures to eliminate this additional tax at the first opportunity, as quickly as possible.
This is the essence of the issue about “scissors”, about “pumping”, about “super tax”, about what is qualified in the above documents as “something like a tribute”.
(“On the right deviation in the CPSU(b)” vol. 12 p. 49.)
Every serious hitch in trade, in production, every serious miscalculation in our economy ends not in one or another individual crisis, but affects the entire national economy. Every crisis, be it commercial, financial, industrial, can turn into a general crisis in our country, hitting the entire state. Therefore, we are required to take special care and foresight during construction. Therefore, here we must manage the economy in a planned manner so that there are fewer miscalculations, so that our management of the economy is extremely insightful, extremely prudent, and extremely error-free. But since, comrades, we, unfortunately, are not distinguished by either special insight, or special forethought, or special abilities for error-free management of the economy, since we are just learning how to build, then we make mistakes and will continue to make them in the future. Therefore, we must build with reserves; we need reserves that could cover our gaps. All our work over the past two years shows that we are not guaranteed against accidents or errors. In the field of agriculture, a lot depends on us not only on our management, but also on natural forces (poor crops, etc.). In the field of industry, a lot depends not only on our management, but also on the domestic market, which we have not yet mastered. In the field of foreign trade, a lot depends not only on us, but also on the behavior of Western European capitalists, and the more our exports and imports grow, the more dependent we become on the capitalist West, the more vulnerable we become to attacks from enemies. To protect ourselves from all these accidents and inevitable mistakes, we need to internalize the idea of the need to accumulate reserves.
We are not guaranteed against shortages in agriculture. Therefore, a reserve is needed. We are not guaranteed against the accidents of the domestic market in the development of our industry. I'm not even talking about the fact that, living on our own accumulated funds, we must be especially stingy and restrained in spending the accumulated funds, trying to invest every penny wisely, that is, in such a thing, the development of which at any given moment is absolutely necessary. Hence the need for reserves for industry. We are not guaranteed against accidents in foreign trade (disguised boycott, disguised blockade, etc.). Hence the need for reserves.
It would be possible to double the amount allocated for agricultural credit, but then there would not be the necessary reserves left to finance industry, industry would lag far behind agriculture in its development, the production of manufactured goods would be reduced, and the result would be an inflated price for manufactured goods with all the ensuing consequences.
It would be possible to allocate twice as much money for the development of industry, but this would be such a rapid pace of industrial development that we would not be able to withstand due to the large lack of free capital, and due to which we would certainly fail, not to mention the fact that there is not enough would be a reserve for agricultural lending.
It would be possible to advance the development of our imports, mainly the import of equipment, twice as much as is the case now, in order to rapidly advance the development of industry, but this could cause an excess of imports over exports, a passive trade balance would form, and our currency would be undermined, that is, the basis on which alone planning and development of industry is possible would be undermined.
It would be possible, without looking at anything, to push exports forward at full speed, without paying attention to the state of the domestic market, but this would certainly cause great complications in the cities in the sense of a rapid rise in prices for agricultural products, in the sense of undermining, therefore, wages and in the sense of some artificially organized famine with all the ensuing results.
It would be possible to raise workers' wages not only to the pre-war level, but even higher, but this circumstance would cause a decrease in the rate of development of our industry, because the expansion of industry under our conditions, in the absence of loans from outside, in the absence of credits, etc. , is possible only on the basis of the accumulation of some profit necessary to finance and feed industry, which, however, would be excluded, that is, any serious accumulation would be excluded if we took the rate of wage rise extremely accelerated. Etc.
("XIV Congress of the CPSU(b)" vol. 7 p. 300.)
...what does it mean to raise the price of bread, say, by 40–50 percent, as, for example, the kulak-speculator elements did? This means, first of all, to undermine the real wages of workers. Let’s assume that we would then raise workers’ wages. But in this case, it would be necessary to raise prices for industrial goods, hitting the financial situation of both the working class and the poor and middle peasants. What would that mean? This would mean a direct and undoubted undermining of our entire economic policy.
But the matter doesn't end there. Let’s say that we raised bread prices by 40-50 percent in January or spring of this year, before preparing for sowing. Where would this lead? We would then disorganize the raw material base of our industry. Cotton growers would abandon cotton and switch to bread as a more profitable business. Flax growers would abandon flax and switch to bread too. Beet growers would do the same. And so on and so forth. In short: we would undermine the raw material base of our industry due to the speculative appetites of the capitalist elements of the countryside.
But that's not all. If we had raised the price of bread, say, in the spring of this year, we would certainly have slaughtered the poor, who buy bread in the spring both for food needs and for sowing fields. The poor and lower strata of the middle peasants would have every right to tell us: you deceived us, since we sold you our grain last fall at low prices, and now you are forcing us to buy bread at high prices - who are you defending, gentlemen, Soviet people? - the poor or the kulaks?
That is why the party had to respond to the speculative blow of the kulaks in terms of inflating grain prices with a counter-attack that would discourage the kulaks and speculators from threatening the working class and our Red Army with starvation.
("On the work of the April United Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission" vol. 11 p. 43.)
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