Read Online Another view of Stalin by Ludo Martens - Free Book Online
Authors: Ludo Martens
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the USSR: develop modern industry under the Socialist State, organize peasant cooperatives and start a cultural revolution, which would bring literacy to the peasant masses and raise the technical and scientific level of the population.
In one of his final texts, Lenin wrote:
`(T)he power of the state over all large-scale means of production, political power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured proletarian leadership of the peasantry, etc. --- is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society out of co-operatives '
.
Lenin, On Co-operation I. Works, vol. 33, p. 468.
Thanks to this perspective, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party were able to draw great enthusiasm from the masses, particularly the worker masses. They created a spirit of sacrifice for the socialist cause and instilled confidence in the future of socialism. In November 1922, Lenin addressed the Moscow Soviet about the New Economic Policy (NEP):
` ``The New Economic Policy!'' A strange title. It was called a New Economic Policy because it turned things back. We are now retreating, going back, as it were; but we are doing so in order, after first retreating, to take a running start and make a bigger leap forward.'
.
Lenin, Speech at a Plenary Session of the Moscow Soviet. Works, vol. 33, p. 437.
He finished as follows:
`NEP Russia will become socialist Russia.'
.
Ibid. , p. 443.
However, it was the question of whether socialism could be built in the Soviet Union that provoked a great ideological and political debate that lasted from 1922 to 1926--1927. Trotsky was on the front line in the attack against Lenin's ideas.
In 1919, Trotsky thought it opportune to republish Results and Prospects, one of his major texts, first published in 1906. In his 1919 preface, he noted: `I consider the train of ideas in its main ramifications very nearly approaches the conditions of our time'.
.
Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects. The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1969), p. 35.
But what are the brilliant `ideas' found in his 1906 work, ideas that Trotsky wanted to see taken up by the Bolshevik Party? He noted that the peasantry was characterized by `political barbarism, social formlessness, primitiveness and lack of character. None of these features can in any way create a reliable basis for a consistent, active proletarian policy'. After the seizure of power,
`The proletariat will find itself compelled to carry the struggle into the villages .... (But) the insufficient degree of class differentiation will create obstacles to the introduction among the peasantry of developed class struggle, upon which the urban proletariat could rely ....
`The cooling-off of the peasantry, its political passivity, and all the more the active opposition of its upper sections, cannot but have an influence on a section of the intellectuals and the petty-bourgeoisie of the towns.
`Thus, the more definite and determined the policy of the proletariat in power becomes, the narrower and more shaky does the ground beneath its feet become.'
.
Ibid. , pp. 76--77.
The difficulties in building socialism that Trotsky enumerated were real. They explain the bitterness of the class struggle in the countryside when the Party launched collectivization in 1929. It would take Stalin's unshakeable resolve and organizational capacities for the socialist rйgime to pass through this terrible test. For Trotsky, the difficulties were the basis for capitulationist and defeatist politics, along with some `ultra-revolutionary' calls for `world revolution'.
Let us return to Trotsky's political strategy, conceived in 1906 and reaffirmed in 1919.
`But how far can the socialist policy of the
In one of his final texts, Lenin wrote:
`(T)he power of the state over all large-scale means of production, political power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured proletarian leadership of the peasantry, etc. --- is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society out of co-operatives '
.
Lenin, On Co-operation I. Works, vol. 33, p. 468.
Thanks to this perspective, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party were able to draw great enthusiasm from the masses, particularly the worker masses. They created a spirit of sacrifice for the socialist cause and instilled confidence in the future of socialism. In November 1922, Lenin addressed the Moscow Soviet about the New Economic Policy (NEP):
` ``The New Economic Policy!'' A strange title. It was called a New Economic Policy because it turned things back. We are now retreating, going back, as it were; but we are doing so in order, after first retreating, to take a running start and make a bigger leap forward.'
.
Lenin, Speech at a Plenary Session of the Moscow Soviet. Works, vol. 33, p. 437.
He finished as follows:
`NEP Russia will become socialist Russia.'
.
Ibid. , p. 443.
However, it was the question of whether socialism could be built in the Soviet Union that provoked a great ideological and political debate that lasted from 1922 to 1926--1927. Trotsky was on the front line in the attack against Lenin's ideas.
In 1919, Trotsky thought it opportune to republish Results and Prospects, one of his major texts, first published in 1906. In his 1919 preface, he noted: `I consider the train of ideas in its main ramifications very nearly approaches the conditions of our time'.
.
Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects. The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1969), p. 35.
But what are the brilliant `ideas' found in his 1906 work, ideas that Trotsky wanted to see taken up by the Bolshevik Party? He noted that the peasantry was characterized by `political barbarism, social formlessness, primitiveness and lack of character. None of these features can in any way create a reliable basis for a consistent, active proletarian policy'. After the seizure of power,
`The proletariat will find itself compelled to carry the struggle into the villages .... (But) the insufficient degree of class differentiation will create obstacles to the introduction among the peasantry of developed class struggle, upon which the urban proletariat could rely ....
`The cooling-off of the peasantry, its political passivity, and all the more the active opposition of its upper sections, cannot but have an influence on a section of the intellectuals and the petty-bourgeoisie of the towns.
`Thus, the more definite and determined the policy of the proletariat in power becomes, the narrower and more shaky does the ground beneath its feet become.'
.
Ibid. , pp. 76--77.
The difficulties in building socialism that Trotsky enumerated were real. They explain the bitterness of the class struggle in the countryside when the Party launched collectivization in 1929. It would take Stalin's unshakeable resolve and organizational capacities for the socialist rйgime to pass through this terrible test. For Trotsky, the difficulties were the basis for capitulationist and defeatist politics, along with some `ultra-revolutionary' calls for `world revolution'.
Let us return to Trotsky's political strategy, conceived in 1906 and reaffirmed in 1919.
`But how far can the socialist policy of the
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