War communism’s focus was on the consolidation of the new military-power hierarchy under civil war conditions, even though it simultaneously exacerbated the economic situation. Meanwhile, Lenin held that socialism, as a system that had reached completion, would only be composed of voluntary associations of economic-productive communities organized from below. It was still a state, though, for “there remains for a time not only bourgeois law, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie” in order to defend the “equality of labor” and public property.13 Lenin differentiated between state and social property even at its inception; before the introduction of war communism, he believed that the productive classes would themselves have to create socialist conditions. War communism was, however, a consistent system of compulsory state-military measures; according to some writers it carried certain traits of the state economic policy of “German war socialism.” Lenin kept the formative theory in sight even while making his most propagandistic political speeches, indicating that until his last day he continued to view the history of the revolution through the lens of Marxist theory (as reconstructed by him).14 Until March 1919, Lenin did not even use the term war communism, and did so afterward mostly in quotation marks. This means that, not just had Lenin not planned “war communism” in either theory or practical political terms, but also that the war communist measures only “coalesced” into a system much later, by the summer of 1919. The “naturalization” of production and distribution, along with the introduction of the ration system and the persecution of private trade, were not a priori economic measures, but sprang from immediate political and social needs.
Just as war communism was not the application of a theory, neither was the NEP the experiment or exercise of one. The Soviet government implemented both war communism and the NEP under the pressure of concrete circumstances, requirements, and needs – without foreseeing its internal or international effects. In both cases their ideologies – the theoretical justification of the “systems” – were developed either parallel to their introduction, or as a follow-up (though war communism incorporated a number of elements from German war economic policy, and the NEP included elements from the “market economy” of the winter and spring of 1918). The NEP meant substituting militarized production – including the ration system, strict state distribution, and the compulsory appropriation of grain – with money and market conditions, reinstituting free trade and introducing taxes in kind. Often forgotten is that, at the same time, the partial reinstatement of capitalist conditions entailed a general social transformation, a restructuring of social classes and groups, and a change in their relationships.
The introduction of a market economy and direct democracy – broadening “workers’ democracy” – also proved to be a contradiction that could not be bridged. Significant segments of the laboring masses became tired of the sacrifices they were called upon to make and were demanding a “loosening of the bolts,” but very few were in possession of the skills required for direct democracy. Lenin later expressed the necessity of the NEP, neatly and self-critically summarizing it at the 11th Party Congress in the spring of 1922: “We must organise things in such a way as to make possible the customary operation of capitalist economy and capitalist exchange, because this is essential for the people”.15 One of the main trends of the current historical literature16 emphasizes the capitalist market characteristic of the NEP, but also that – with its well-known measures permitting rural wage labor from 1922 onward – the Soviet state integrated social conflicts into the as yet not fully formed “web” of Soviet society, which later threatened instability and inner combustion, and finally had a major role in the later defeat of the NEP.
The concept of state capitalism is used in two senses here: on the one hand as a sector of a mixed market economy. On the other it is a term from formation theory denoting the economic method and arrangement for the transitional period and seen as a phase of it. It is a type of “state capitalism,” in quotes, that cannot be found in “any textbooks,” “nor in the writings of Marx and Engels”.
“Soviet state capitalism” – the way Lenin thought of it, and the party congress declared it – was intended to establish the political and cultural preconditions of socialism. This was a matter of serious contention between Lenin and the Mensheviks, Western social democrats, liberals, and others, who doubted the “reasonability of the Bolshevik experiment” while remaining insensitive to its uniqueness. Lenin saw himself as the representative of a historical alternative, in circumstances in which no other reality had materialized on the left. He repeatedly said the originality of the Russian Revolution was that the prerequisites of socialism came into existence not before it – but after.
Though the NEP had been “made to last,” theoretical socialism was never struck off Lenin’s agenda, even under the everyday circumstances of market restoration. As he explained it: “Formerly the stumbling block for very many socialists” was how to first subordinate the “concession to the peasant as a trader, or to the principle of private trade,” “for the sake of common interests” only to come around once again in the process to the cooperative as a solution. Though he knew that thinkers and politicians who had been nursed by the market and state looked down upon cooperatives, even “from the standpoint of transition to the new system by means that are the simplest, easiest and most acceptable to the peasant.” He knew that incorporating the whole population in voluntary cooperatives of production and consumption would take an epoch to realize – precisely on account of the absence of the cultural-civilizatorial preconditions – and yet he insisted on posing this problem.17 The precise relationship between cooperatives and socialism that Lenin had in mind becomes clear in the light of his whole approach, the complete coherency of his thoughts. The cooperatives, as he wrote, are the products of capitalism; they are “collective capitalist institutions” in which the future of socialism can be glimpsed. Producers have the opportunity to shape the cooperatives in their own image in the course of a revolutionary reform of state power, similarly to how in the NEP, “when we combine private capitalist enterprises … with enterprises of the consistently socialist type … the question arises about a third type of enterprise, the cooperatives, which were not formally regarded as an independent type differing fundamentally from the others.” He spoke about the possibility of coexisting state socialist and cooperative socialist enterprises, though a differentiation between the two forms of cooperative, state and self-governed, would come due.18 By the mid-1920s, nearly 10 million people had been pooled into state-organized and state-subsidized consumer cooperatives. Lenin marked out explicitly that a shift must be made from the interpretation of socialism previously reached (war communist, state powered, and politicized) to the position of “cooperative socialism”:
Now we are entitled to say that for us the mere growth of cooperation … is identical with the growth of socialism, and at the same time we have to admit that there has been a radical modification in our whole outlook on socialism. The radical modification is this; formerly we placed, and had to place, the main emphasis on the political struggle, on revolution, on winning political power, etc. Now the emphasis is changing and shifting to peaceful, organizational, “cultural” work. I should say that emphasis is shifting to educational work, were it not for our international relations, were it not for the fact that we have to fight for our position on a world scale.19
Of course he treated the outlook for real socialism very cautiously on account of the “ridiculously inadequate elements of knowledge, education and training.”
The most comprehensive modern theory of socialism has been published by István Mészáros, who ties his work on capital to the theoretical fundamentals of Marx and Lenin, and links his concept of socialism, not to the concepts of market production, but both looks for and defines these concepts beyond the market and the state – “beyond capital,” in short. The first generation of Soviet ideologues, including Lenin, defined the difference between the state capitalisms under the reign of capital and the dictatorship of the proletariat in that they wielded power in the name of a different class. They consolidated different modes of distribution and ownership, with a preference for different cultural values, marking out different political goals for society. Lenin limited the direct socialist exchange of goods (following war communism) to the state-socialist sector, its fate hanging by the market competition that connected to the capitalist sectors of the NEP and the “state-regulated buying and selling, to the money system”.20 Contrary to Lenin, Bukharin often defined this “state economy” as socialism, in both the ABC he wrote with Preobrazhensky, and in his Economics of the Transition Period (Ekonomika perekhodnogo perioda). This definition of socialism as state socialism transitioned directly – leaving Lenin out – to the ideological medium of the Stalinist period.
Lenin outlines four potential courses of development during the “state capitalist” phase of the transitional period, which also explains why such a wide variety of movements, both inside and outside of Russia, refer to his ideas. Three of these possibilities remained aligned with the conceptions of socialism (the fourth being the Ustryalov scenario of reversion to capitalism). In the course of time, the three basic trends could be observed not only in political thought and factional struggles, but also in historiography:
1. Intellectual groups, politicians, and thinkers who considered the multisector economy (defined by a state-regulated market and the state overseen by society) of the NEP as socialism – later identified as “market socialists” – who took their inspiration from the late work of Bukharin, although he never actually called a market economy “socialism” (despite counting on the market economy continuing for a long time, even if differently from Lenin).21
2. Stalin and his followers who were called, in this sense, “state socialists” – although it was Lenin who was proclaimed the progenitor of the market reforms of socialism in 1951. In the 1980s, this trend finally merged with the market socialists,22 who had earlier been designated “revisionists.” István Mészáros gives a generous summary of the characteristics of market socialism’s nature. Most importantly he unmasks the common motives of social democratic thinking and the Stalinist tradition in their similar “superstitious” way of relating to state and market. Both camps positioned themselves rigidly in opposition to the conversion of state property into communal property. Both the traditional forms of labor division and the power of disposing of surplus value remained within the scope of the detached apparatus. Every experiment that tried to reform this was undermined by the leaders of that party, even though Lenin had founded it with exactly the opposite aim. Though the later forms of market socialism were advertised as reformed state socialism, the first (market socialism) proved to be an evolved state of the second (state socialism), which in the end led to capitalism.23
3. The conception of socialism founded on autodynamic – self-generating – and needs-based production, direct democracy, cooperative ventures, and the “cooperative system” of producer and consumer collectives, traces back to Lenin’s way of thinking and has a rather extensive historiography to its credit.24
Революции 1917 г. в России – анализ и оценка качественных трансформаций общества
Ананченко А.Б.
Аннотация. Понимание исторического места революций 1917 г. в России необходимо для формирования позитивного исторического самосознания нашего общества. Февраль 1917 г. – классическая буржуазная революция нового времени. Октябрь 1917 г. – новая социально-политическая революция, которая не завершает формирование нового общества, нового социально-экономического организма, а впервые в истории начинает создание такого общества с захвата политической власти в стране и создание нового общества на основе мировоззренческого, философского, экономического, культурного и социально-политического проекта. С Октября 1917 г. мы можем говорить о вариативности исторического процесса, о строительстве нового общества, создании и применении технологий социального управления.
Ключевые слова: революция, политическая революция, прогресс и регресс в развитии общества, историческое место советского общества, альтернативный тип буржуазному обществу, архаизация общества, естественно-исторические процессы, технологии управления социально-политическими процессами.
REVOLUTIONS OF 1917 IN RUSSIA – ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF THE QUALITATIVE TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE SOCIETY
Ananchenko A.B.
Absrtact. Understanding the historical place of the revolution of 1917 in Russia is necessary for the formation of a positive historical identity of our society. February 1917 – the classic bourgeois revolution of the new time. October 1917 is a new socio-political revolution that does not complete the formation of a new society, a new socioeconomic organism, but for the first time in history begins the creation of a new society with the seizure of political power in the country and the creation of a new society based on ideological, philosophical, economic cultural and socio-political project of a new society. From October 1917 we can talk about the variability of the historical process, the construction of a new society, the creation and application of social management technologies.
Keywords: revolution, political revolution, progress and regress in the development of society, the historical place of Soviet society, an alternative type of bourgeois society, the archaization of society, natural history processes, technology management of socio-political processes.
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