Сборник статей - Революции в России. Теория и практика социальных преобразований

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 17 “The cooperatives must be granted state loans that are greater, if only by a little, than the loans we grant to private enterprises.” (The cooperative order as socialism.) “But it will take a whole historical epoch to get the entire population into the work of the cooperatives through NEP.” See: Lenin V.I. On Cooperation // LCW. Vol. 33. P. 469–470. 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 18 Ibid. P. 472–473. 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 19 LCW. Vol. 33. P. 474.

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 20 Ibid. P. 96. 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 21 Such a historical interpretation of Lenin can be found in a number of recent publications, among them: Burtin Y. Drugoy sotsializm / Almanakh “Krasniye holmi”. 1999. P. 411–511; as well as Ivanov Y.M. Chuzhoy sredi svoih: Posledniye godi zhizni Lenina. Moscow, 2002.

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 22 Two of my works, both in English, address the transformations “market socialism” went through over historical time. See: Krausz T. Stalin's socialism. Today's debate on socialism: theory, history, politics // Contemporary politics. Vol. 11. № 4 (Dec. 2005). P. 87–106; Krausz T. Perestroika and the redistributation of property in the Soviet Union: political perspectives and historical evidence // Contemporary Politics. Vol. 13. № 1 (March 2007). P. 3–36; as well as, in Hungarian: Krausz T., Bíró Sz. Z. A peresztrojka és tulajdonváltás. Politikai koncepciók és történelmi valóság // Peresztrojka és tulajdonáthelyezés. Tanulmányok és dokumentumok a rendszerváltás történetéből a Szovjetunióban (1985–1991). Budapest: MRI, 2003. P. 52–102; Krausz T., Tütő L. Válaszúton [Crossways] // Politikatudományi Füzetek. 1998. № 7. 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 23 See: Mészáros I. Beyond Capital. London: Merlin Press, 1995. P. 823–850.

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 24 Apart from István Mészaros’s work, this tradition is also honored in part by the Trotskyist heritage in Western Europe, in part by the Russian “self-governors” who are gathered largely around the journal called Alternativu, which is related in its positions to the Hungarian journal Eszmélet. See also: Krausz T., Tütő L. Önkormányzás vagy az elitek uralma [Self-government or the reign of the elites]. Budapest: Liberter Kiadó, 1995 and Бllamszocializmus. Trotsky, who defended state property as the precondition of socialism even in the 1930s, was later the recipient of sharp criticism from Marxists as well, for becoming a protector of Stalinism. These critics forgot that Trotsky’s precise notion was that it will be easier to socialize Soviet state property in a “revolutionary turn”, than if the bureaucracy and capital alienates state property from those who created it by way of private expropriation. For more on this, see: Krausz T. Szovjet Thermidor: a sztálini fordulat szellemi előzményei (1917–1928). Napvilág, 1996. P. 227–230.

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.