The Platform of the Opposition was transcribed for the Trotsky Internet Archive by Peter LaVenia in 1999.
Note: The title page of the Russian typescript identified this as a "draft" Platform, submitted to the Politburo by thirteen members of the Central Committee and the CCC for the Fifteenth Congress of the AUCP. "They reserve for themselves the right to make specific revisions in this platform up to the eve of the congress - after the exchange of opinions in print and at party meetings." In the upper right-hand corner was the warning: "For circulation only to members of the AUCP(B)." The signatories were Muralov, Yevdokimov, Rakovsky, Pyatakov, Smilga, Zinoviev, Trotsky, Kamenev, Peterson, Bakaev, Solovyov, Lizdin, Avdeev. But in "An Appeal to Party Members"(see New International, November 1934), Trotsky wrote that two hundred party members had contributed to the Platform.
The Platform of the Opposition is the principal document of the years 1926-1927. It was designed as a contribution to the pre-congress discussion; Trotsky and the other Oppositionists hoped that it would be distributed to party members, as party rules insisted it should be, and they used it to sum up virtually every criticism of the Stalinists' policy that they had made since the United Opposition bloc was formed. According to Victor Serge - a French Oppositionist born in Belgium who was in the Soviet Union at this time (later arrested and confined, he was allowed to leave the USSR only in 1936) - the chapters on agriculture and the International were drafted by Zinoviev and Kamenev, the one on industrialization by Trotsky; as each section was completed it was submitted to meetings of Oppositionists for discussion and reworking (Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 222). In The Third International After Lenin (p. 128), Trotsky says that the Chinese revolution is dealt with in the Platform very insufficiently, incompletely, and in party positively falsely by Zinoviev. The completed draft was delivered to the Politburo on September 3.
In his speech at the last party congress he attended [1922] Lenin said: "Well, we have lived through a year, the state is in our hands; but has it operated the New Economic Policy in the way we wanted in this past year? No. But we refuse to admit that it did not operate in the way we wanted. How did it operate? The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was going not in the direction the driver desired, but in the direction someone else desired; as if it were being driven by some mysterious, lawless hand, God knows whose, perhaps a profiteer's, or a private capitalist's, or both. Be that as it may, the car is not going quite in the direction the man at the wheel imagines, and often it goes in an altogether different direction" [Collected Works, vol. 33, p. 279].
Those words gave the criterion we ought to apply in discussing our fundamental political problems. In what direction is the machine - the government, the state power - traveling? In the direction that we Communists, expressing the interests and will of the workers and the enormous mass of peasants, desire? Or not in that direction? Or "not quite" in that direction?
In the years since Lenin's death we have more than once tried to bring the central institutions of our party, and afterward the party as a whole, to the fact that thanks to incorrect leadership, the danger indicated by Lenin has greatly increased. The machine is not going in the direction required by the interests of the workers and peasants. On the eve of the new congress we consider it our duty, despite all the persecution we are suffering, to call the party's attention with redoubled energy to this fact. For we are sure that the situation is rectifiable, that the party itself can correct it.
When Lenin said that the car often goes in a direction desired by forces hostile to us, he called our attention to two facts of supreme importance. First, that there exist in our society these forces hostile to our cause - the kulak, the NEPman, the bureaucrat - which take advantage of our backwardness and our political mistakes and, in doing so, rely in fact upon the support of international capitalism. Second, the fact that these forces are so strong that they can push our governmental and economic machine in the wrong direction, and ultimately even attempt - at first in a concealed manner - to seize the wheel of the car.
Lenin's words impose certain obligations on all of us:
1. To pay close attention to the growth of these hostile forces - kulak, NEPman, and bureaucrat;
2. To remember that in proportion to the general revival of the country, these forces will strive to unite, introduce their own "amendments" into our plans, exercise an increasing pressure on our policy, and satisfy their interests through our apparatus;
3. To take all possible measures to weaken the growth, unity, and pressure of these hostile forces, preventing them from creating that actual, though concealed, dual power system toward which they aspire;
4. To tell the industrial workers and all working people the whole truth about these class processes under way in our society. This is the key to the question of the "Thermidorian" danger and the struggle against it.
5. Since Lenin uttered his warning, many things have improved with us, but many have also grown worse. The influence of the state apparatus is growing, and with it the bureaucratic deformation of the workers' state. The absolute and relative growth of capitalism in the countryside and its absolute growth in the cities are beginning to produce a political self-consciousness in the bourgeois elements of our country. These elements are trying - not always unsuccessfully - to corrupt that part of the Communists with whom they come in contact at work and in social intercourse. The slogan presented by Stalin at the Fourteenth Party Congress, "Fire Against the Left!" could not but promote this union of the right elements in the party with the bourgeois- Ustryalov elements in our country.
The question "Who will prevail?" will be decided in a continuous struggle of classes on all sectors of the economic, political, and cultural fronts - a struggle for a socialist or a capitalist course of development, for a distribution of the national income corresponding to one or the other of these two courses, for a solid political power of the proletariat or a division of this power with the new bourgeoisie. In a country with an overwhelming majority of small and very small peasants, and small proprietors in general, the most important processes of this struggle go on for a while in a fragmentary and underground manner, only to burst "unexpectedly" to the surface all at once.
The capitalist element finds its primary expression in the class differentiation in the countryside and the increased numbers of private traders. The upper layers in the countryside and the bourgeois elements in the city are interweaving themselves more and more closely with the various components of our government and economic apparatus. And this apparatus not infrequently helps the new bourgeoisie to shroud in a statistical fog its successful effort to increase its share in the national income.
The trade apparatus - state, cooperative, and private - devours an enormous share of the national income, more than one-tenth of the gross national product. Furthermore, private capital, in its capacity as commercial middleman, has handled in recent years considerably more than a fifth of all trade - in absolute figures, more than five billion rubles a year. Up to now, most consumers have obtained more than 50 percent of the products they need from private traders. For the private capitalist this is the fundamental source of profit and accumulation. The "scissors" (disproportion) between agricultural and industrial prices, between different branches of agriculture, and from one region or season to another, and finally the "scissors" between domestic and world prices (contraband) are a constant source of private gain.
Private capital is collecting usurious interest on loans and is making money on government bonds.
The role of the private capitalist in industry is also very considerable. Even though it has decreased relatively in the recent period, still it has grown absolutely. Registered private capitalist industry shows a gross output of 400 million a year. Small, home, and handicraft industries show more than 1800 million. Altogether, the production of the non-state industries constitutes more than a fifth of the whole production of goods, and about 40 percent of the commodities in the general market. The overwhelming bulk of this industry is bound up one way or another with private capital. The various open or concealed forms of exploitation of the mass of handicraft workers by commercial and home-enterprise capital are an extremely important and, moreover, a growing source of accumulation for the bourgeoisie.
Taxes, wages, prices, and credit are the chief instruments of distributing the national income, strengthening certain classes and weakening others.
The agricultural tax in the countryside is imposed, as a general rule, in an inverse progression: heavily on the poor, more lightly on the economically strong and on the kulaks. According to approximate calculations, 34 percent of the poor peasant households of in the Soviet Union (even omitting provinces with a highly developed class differentiation, such as the Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, and Siberia) receive 18 percent of the net income. Exactly the same total income, 18 percent, is received by the highest group, constituting only 7.5 percent of peasant households. Yet both these groups pay approximately the same amount, 20 percent each of the total tax. It is evident from this that on each individual poor farm the tax lays a much heavier burden than on the kulak, or "economically strong" peasant household in general. Contrary to the fears of the leaders of the Fourteenth Congress, our tax policy by no means "strips" the kulak. It does not hinder him in the least from concentrating in his hands a continually greater accumulation in money and kind.
The role of indirect taxes in our budget is growing alarmingly at the expense of direct taxes. By that alone the tax burden automatically shifts from the wealthier to the poorer levels. The taxation of the workers in 1925-26 was twice as high as in the preceding year, while the taxation of the rest of the urban population diminished by 6 percent (Vestnik Finansov, 1927, no. 2, p. 52). The liquor tax falls, with more and more unbearable heaviness, precisely upon the industrial regions. The increase in per capita income for 1926 as compared to 1925 - according to certain approximate calculations - constituted, for the peasants, 19 percent; for the workers, 26 percent; for the merchants and industrialists, 46 percent. If you divide the "peasants" into the three main groups, it will be seen without a doubt that the income of the kulak increased more than that of the worker. The income of the merchants and industrialists, calculated on the basis of the tax data, is undoubtedly represented as less than it is. However, even these doctored figures clearly testify to a growth of class differences.
The "scissors" between agricultural and industrial prices have opened even more during the last year and a half. The peasant received for his produce not more than one and a quarter times the prewar price, and again predominantly by the lower strata, amounted in the past year to about one billion rubles. This not only increases the conflict between agriculture and industry, not only increases the conflict between agriculture and industry, but greatly intensifies the class differentiation in the countryside.
On the scissors between wholesale and retail prices, the state industry loses, and also the consumer, which means that there is a third party who gains. It is the private capitalist who gains, and consequently capitalism.
Real wages in 1927 stand, at the best, at the same level as in the autumn of 1925. Yet it is indubitable that during the two intervening years the country has grown richer, the total national income has increased, the topmost kulak layer in the countryside has increased its reserves with enormous rapidity, and the accumulated wealth of the private capitalist, the merchant, and the speculator has grown by leaps and bounds. It is clear that the share of the working class in the total income of the country has fallen, while the share of the other classes has grown. The fact is of supreme importance in appraising our whole situation.
Only someone who believes at the bottom of his heart that our working class and our party are not able to cope with difficulties and dangers can say that a frank description of these contradictions in our development, and of the growth of these hostile forces, constitutes panic or pessimism. We do not accept this view. It is necessary to see the dangers clearly. We point the out accurately, precisely in order to struggle against them more effectively and to overcome them.
A certain growth of the hostile forces - the kulak, the NEPman, and the bureaucrat - is unavoidable under the New Economic Policy. You cannot destroy these forces by mere administrative order or by simple economic pressure. In introducing the NEP and carrying it through, we ourselves made some room for capitalist relations in our country, and for a considerable time to come we still have to accept them as inevitable. Lenin merely reminded us of a naked truth which the workers have to know, when he said: "As long as we live in a small-peasant country, there will be a firmer basis for capitalism in Russia than for communism. That must be borne in mind.... We have not torn up the roots of capitalism and we have not undermined the foundation, the basis, of the internal enemy" [Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 516].
The supremely important social fact here indicated by Lenin cannot, as we said, be simply eliminated. But we can fight against it and overcome it through a correct, planned, and systematic working class policy, relying on the poor peasant and an alliance with the middle peasant. This policy basically consists in an all-around strengthening of all the social positions of the proletariat, in the swiftest possible build-up and expansion of the commanding heights of socialism, in the closest possible connection with the preparation and development of the world proletarian revolution.
A correct Leninist policy also includes maneuvering. In struggling against the forces of capitalism, Lenin often employed a method of partial concession in order to outflank the enemy, temporary retreat in order afterwards to move forward more successfully. Maneuvering is also necessary now. But in dodging and maneuvering against and enemy that could not be overthrown by direct attack, Lenin invariably remained upon the line of proletarian revolution. Under him the party always knew the reasons for each maneuver, its meaning, its limits, the line beyond which it ought not to go, and the position at which the proletarian advance should begin again. In those days, under Lenin, a retreat was called a retreat - a concession, a concession. Thanks to that, the maneuvering proletarian army always preserved its unity, its fighting spirit, its clear consciousness of the goal.
In the recent period there has been a decisive departure by the leadership from these Leninist ways. The Stalin group is leading the party blindfolded. Concealing the forces of the enemy, creating everywhere and in everything an official appearance of success, this group give the proletariat no perspective - or, what is worse, a wrong perspective. It moves in zigzags, accommodating itself to and ingratiating itself with hostile elements. It weakens and confuses the proletarian army. It promotes the growth of passivity, distrust of the leadership, and lack of confidence in the strength of the revolution. It disguises, with references to Leninist maneuvering, an unprincipled tendency to rush off, first in one direction, then in another. These turns are always a surprise to the party. It does not understand them and is weakened by them. The only result is that the enemy having gained time, moves forward. The "classical" examples of such maneuvers on the part of Stalin, Bukharin, and Rykov are the Chinese policy and their policy with the Anglo-Russian Committee, in the international arena, and within the country, their policy towards the kulak. On all these questions the party and the working class found out the truth, or a part of the truth, only after heavy consequences of a policy that was false to the core and crashed over their heads.
At the end of these two years, in which the Stalin group has really determined the policies of the central institutions of our party, we may consider it fully proven that this group has been powerless to prevent: (1) an immoderate growth of those forces which desire to turn the development of our country in a capitalist direction; (2) a weakening of the position of the working class and the poorest peasants against the growing strength of the kulak, the NEPman, and the bureaucrat; (3) a weakening of the general position of the workers' state in the struggle against world capitalism, a worsening of the international position of the Soviet Union.
The Stalin group is directly to blame because instead of telling the party, the working class, and the peasants the whole truth about the situation, it has concealed the facts, played down the growth of hostile forces, and silenced those who demanded the truth and laid it bare.
The concentration of fire against the left, at a time when the whole situation indicates danger on the right; the crudely mechanical suppression of all criticism expressing the legitimate alarm of the proletariat over the fate of the proletarian revolution; outright complicity with deviations to the right; the sapping of the influence of the proletarian and Old Bolshevik nucleus of the party - all these things are weakening and disarming the working class at a moment which demands above all activity by the proletariat, vigilance and unity of the party, and loyalty to the true legacy of Leninism.
The party leaders distort Lenin, improve upon him, explain him, supplement him, in accordance with their need to conceal each successive mistake. Since Lenin's death a whole series of new theories has been invented, whose meaning is only this: that they give theoretical justification to the Stalin group's backsliding from the policy of international proletarian revolution. The Mensheviks, the Smenovekhovites, and finally the capitalist press have seen and welcomed the policies and new theories of Stalin-Bukharin-Martynov as a movement "forward from Lenin" (Ustryalov), "statesmanlike wisdom", "realism", and renunciation of the "utopianism" of revolutionary Bolshevism. In the removal of a number of Bolsheviks - Lenin's comrades in arms - from the party leadership, they see and openly welcome a practical step toward changing the fundamental course of the party.
Meanwhile the elemental processes of the NEP, not restrained and directed by a firm class policy, are laying the basis for further dangerous shifts.
Twenty-five million small farms constitute the fundamental source of the capitalist tendencies in Russia. The kulak stratum, gradually emerging from the mass, is carrying out the process of primitive accumulation of capital, extensively undermining the socialist position. The fate of this process depends ultimately upon the relation between the growth of the state economy and the private. The lag in the development of our industry greatly increases the rate of class differentiation among the peasants and the political dangers arising from it.
Lenin wrote that the kulaks "in the history of other countries have time and again restored the power of the landowners, tsars, priests, and capitalists," that such was the case "in all earlier European revolutions when, as a result of the weakness of the workers, the kulaks succeeded in turning back from a republic to a monarchy, from a working people's government to a despotism of the exploiters, the rich, and the parasites"; and finally, that "even if they have quarreled, the kulak can easily come to terms with the landowner, the tsar, and the priest, but with the working class never" [Collected Works, vol. 28, pp.55-56].
Whoever fails to understand this, whoever believes in "the kulak's growing into socialism," is good for just one thing - to run the revolution aground.
There exist in this country two mutually exclusive fundamental positions. One, the position of the proletariat building socialism; the other, the position of the bourgeoisie aspiring to turn our development in a capitalist direction.
The camp of the bourgeoisie and those layers of the petty bourgeoisie who follow in its wake are placing all their hopes upon the private initiative and the personal interest of the commodity producer. This camp places its bets on the "economically strong" peasant, aiming to make the cooperatives, industry, and foreign trade serve this peasant's interest. This camp believes that socialist industry ought not to depend budget, that its development ought not to be such as to interfere with accumulation by the farmer capitalist. The struggle for greater labor productivity means to the increasingly influential petty bourgeois putting pressure on the muscles and nerves of the workers. The struggle for lower prices means to him cutting down on accumulation by socialist industry for the benefit of commercial capital. The struggle against bureaucratism means to him the break-up and dispersal of industry, the weakening of the principle of planning. It means the pushing into the background of heavy industry - that is, again, an adjustment in favor of the economically strong peasant, with the near perspective of abandoning the monopoly on foreign trade. This is the course of the Ustryalovs. The name of this course is capitalism on the installment plan. It is a strong tendency in country, and exercises an influence upon certain circles of our party.
The proletarian course was described by Lenin in the following words: "The victory of socialism may be regarded as ensured only when the proletarian state power, having completely suppressed all resistance by the exploiters and assured itself complete subordination and stability, has reorganized the whole of industry on the lines of large-scale collective production and on a modern technical basis (founded on the electrification of the entire economy). This alone will enable the cities to render such radical assistance, technical and social, to the backward and scattered rural population as will create the material basis necessary to boost the productivity of agricultural and of farm labor in general, thereby encouraging the small farmers by the force of example in their own interests to adopt large-scale, collective, and mechanized agriculture" [Collected Works, vol. 31, pp. 161-62].
The whole policy of our party ought to be base on this approach - budget, taxes, industry, agriculture, domestic and foreign trade, everything. That is the fundamental stand of the Opposition. That is the road to socialism.
Between those two positions - every day drawing nearer to the first - the Stalinists are tracing a line consisting of short zigzags to the left and deep ones to the right. The Leninist course is a socialist development of the productive forces in continual struggle against the capitalist element. The Ustryalov course is a development of the productive forces on a capitalist basis by way of a gradual erosion of the conquests of October. The Stalin course leads, in objective reality, to a delaying of the development of the productive forces, to a lowering of the relative weight of the socialist element, and thus paves the way for the victory of the Ustryalov line. The Stalin course is more dangerous and ruinous in that it conceals its real backsliding behind a mask of familiar words and phrases. The completion of the economic restoration process has meant that all the crucial questions of our economic development are now posed pointblank. This has undermined the Stalinist political line, because it is totally inadequate for solving major problems - whether these involve the revolution in China or the reconstruction of basic capital in the Soviet Union.
Notwithstanding the tension of the situation, heightened in the extreme by the crude mistakes of the present leadership, matters can be corrected. But it is necessary to change the line of the party leadership, and change it sharply, in the direction indicated by Lenin.
The October Revolution, for the first time in history, made the proletariat the ruling class of an immense state. The nationalization of the means of production was a decisive step toward the socialist reorganization of the entire social system based on the exploitation of some by others. The introduction of the eight-hour day was a step toward a total change in all aspects of the material and cultural living conditions of the working class. In spite of the poverty of our country, our labor laws established for the workers - even the most backward, who were deprived in the past of any group defense - legal guarantees of a kind that the richest capitalist state never gave, and never will give. The trade unions, raised to the status of the most important social instrument in the hands of the ruling class, were given the opportunity, on the one hand, to organize masses that under other circumstances would have been completely inaccessible to them and, on the other, to directly influence the whole political course of the whole workers' state.
The task of the party is to guarantee the further development of these supreme historical conquests - that is, to fill them with a genuinely socialist content. Our success on this road will be determined by objective conditions, domestic and international, and also by the correctness of our line and the practical skill of our leadership.
The decisive factor in appraising the progress of our country along the road of socialist reconstruction must be the growth of our productive forces and the dominance off the socialist elements over the capitalists - together with improvement in all the living conditions of the working class. This improvement ought to be evident in the material sphere (number of workers employed in industry, level of real wages, the kind of budget appropriations for the workers' needs, housing conditions, medical services, etc.); in the political sphere (party, trade unions, soviets, the Communist youth organization); and finally in the cultural sphere (schools, books, newspapers, theaters). The attempt to push the vital interests of the worker into the background and, under the contemptuous epithet of "narrow craft professionalism," to counterpose them to the general historical interests of the working class, is theoretically wrong and politically dangerous.
The appropriation of surplus value by a workers' state is not, of course, exploitation. But in the first place, we have a workers' state with bureaucratic distortions. The swollen and privileged administrative apparatus devours a very considerable part of the surplus value. In the second place, the growing bourgeoisie, through trade and by taking advantage of the price scissors, appropriates part of the surplus value created by state industry.
In general during this period of economic reconstruction, the number of workers and their standard of living have risen, not only absolutely buy also relatively - that is, in comparison with the growth of other classes. However, in the recent period a sharp change has occurred. The numerical growth of the working class and the improvement of its situation has almost stopped, while the growth of its enemies continues, and continues at an accelerated pace. This inevitably leads not to only a worsening of conditions in the factories but also a lowering of the relative weight of the proletariat in Soviet society.
The Mensheviks, agents of the bourgeoisie among the workers, point with malicious pleasure to the material wretchedness of our workers, seeking to rouse the proletariat against the Soviet state, to induce our workers to accept the bourgeois-Menshevik slogan "Back to capitalism". The self-satisfied official who sees "Menshevism" in the Opposition's insistence upon improving the material conditions of the workers is performing the best service possible to Menshevism. He is driving the workers toward its yellow banner.
In order to deal with problems, we must know what they are. We must judge our successes and failures in a just and honest way in relation to the actual condition of the masses of workers.
The period of economic reconstruction brought with it a sufficiently rapid increase in wages up to the autumn of 1925. But the substantial decline in real wages which began in 1926 was overcome only at the beginning of 1927. Monthly wages in the first two quarters of the fiscal year 1926-27 amounted on the average in large-scale industry, in Moscow rubles, to 30 rubles 67 kopeks, and 30 rubles 33 kopeks - as against 29 rubles 68 kopeks in the autumn of 1925. In the third quarter - according to preliminary calculations - wages for the present year have stood still, approximately at the level of the autumn of 1925.
Of course the wages and the overall material level of particular categories of workers and particular regions - above all, Moscow and Leningrad - are undoubtedly higher than this average level. But on the other hand, the material level of other very broad layers of the working class is considerably below these average figures.
Moreover, all the data indicate that the growth of wages is lagging behind the growth of other labor productivity. The intensity of labor is increasing - the bad conditions of labor remain the same.
The requirement that there be greater intensity of labor is more and more being made the condition for an increase in wages. This new tendency, inconsistent with a socialist policy, was affirmed by the Central Committee in its famous resolution on rationalization (Pravda, March 25, 1927). The Fourth Congress of the Soviets adopted this same resolution. Such a policy would mean that an increase in social wealth resulting from technological progress (increased productivity of labor) would not in itself lead to an increase in wages.
The small numerical growth of the working class means a reduction in the number of working members in each family. In real rubles, the expense budget of the working class family has decreased since 1924-25. The increase in the cost of living quarters forces working families to rent out part of their space. The unemployed, directly or indirectly, burden the budget of the worker. The swiftly growing consumption of alcoholic liquors also takes away from the working class budget. As a result there is an obvious lowering of living standards. The rationalization of production now being introduced will inevitably worsen the conditions of the working class even more, unless it is accompanied by an expansion in industry and transport sufficient to take the discharged workers. In practice, "rationalization" often comes down to "throwing out" some workers and lowering the material conditions of others. This inevitably fills the masses of workers with a distrust of rationalization itself.
When labor's living standards are under pressure, it is always the weakest groups that suffer the most; unskilled workers, seasonal workers, women, and adolescents.
In 1926, there was an obvious lowering of the wages of women as compared with those of men, in almost all branches of industry. Among the unskilled in three different branches of industry, the earnings of women in March 1926 were 51.8 percent, 61.7 percent, and 83 percent of the earnings of men. Necessary measures have not been taken for improving the conditions of women's work in such branches as the peat industry, loading and unloading, etc. The average earnings of adolescents, in comparison with the earnings of workers as a whole, are steadily declining. In 1923 they were 47.1 percent, in 1924 45 percent, in 1925 43.4 percent, in 1926 40.5, in 1927 39.5 percent (Review of the Economic Situation of Young People in 1924-25 and in 1925-26).
In March 1926 49.6 percent of adolescents earned less than 20 rubles (Central Bureau of Labor Statistics). The abolition of the regulation providing for the employment of a certain number of adolescents for every given number of workers in an industrial establishment has been a heavy blow to the working youth and to the working class family. The number of unemployed is also greatly increasing.
Of the approximately 3, 500, 000 wage workers in the country, 1, 600, 000 are farmhands, men and women. Only 20 percent of these farmhands are organized in unions. The registration of wage contracts, which often contain terms amounting to outright servitude, is barely beginning. The wages of farmhands are customarily below the legal minimum - and this often even on state farms. Real wages on the average are not over 63 percent of the prewar level. The working day is rarely less than ten hours. In the majority of cases it is, as a matter of fact, unlimited. Wages are paid irregularly and after intolerable delays. The miserable situation of the hired laborer is not only a result of the difficulties of socialist construction in a backward, peasant country. It is also unquestionably a result of the false course which in practice - in the reality of life - gives predominant attention to the upper levels and not the lower levels of the village. We must have an all-sided, systematic defense of the hired laborer, not only against the kulak but also against the so-called economically strong middle peasant.
The normal dwelling space for the workers is, as a rule, considerably smaller than the average space for the urban population as a whole. The workers of the great industrial cities are in this respect the least favored part of the population. The distribution of dwelling space according to social groups, in a series of investigated cities, was as follows:
Per industrial worker, 5.6 square meters; per office worker, 6.9; per handicraftsman, 7.1. The workers occupy the last place. Moreover, the size of the workers' living space is diminishing from year to year; that of the nonproletarian elements is increasing. The general situation in regard to housing construction threatens the further development of industry. Nevertheless, the five-year plan of the State Planning Commission puts forward a perspective in which the housing situation at the end of five years will be worse than it now is - this, according to the admission of the commission itself. From 8.1 meters at the end of 1926, the average norm will be lowered by the end of 1931, according to the five-year plan, to 7.6 meters.
The slow growth of industrialization nowhere reveals itself so unhealthily as in the unemployment which has attacked the basic ranks of the industrial proletariat. The official number of registered unemployed in April 1927 was 1, 478, 000 (Trud, August 27, 1927). The actual number of unemployed is about two million. The number of unemployed is growing especially rapidly. According to the five-year plan of the State Planning Commission, industry will absorb slightly more than 400, 000 steadily employed workers during the whole five years. This means that, with the continual influx of workers from the countryside, the number of unemployed will have grown by the end of 1931 to no less than three million. The consequence of this state of affairs will be an increase in the number of homeless children, beggars, and prostitutes. The small unemployment insurance paid to those who are out of work is causing justifiable resentment. The average benefit is 11.9 rubles - that is, about 5 prewar rubles. The trade union benefits average 6.5 to 7 rubles. And these benefits are paid, approximately, to only 20 percent of the unemployed members of the union.
The Code of Labor Laws has undergone so many interpretations that these exceed by many times the number of articles in the code. And they actually annul many of its provisions. Legal protection for temporary and seasonal workers has especially broken down.
The recent collective-bargaining campaign was characterized by an almost universal worsening of the legal guarantees and a downward pressure on standards and wage scales. Giving government economic agencies the right of compulsory arbitration has reduced to nothing the collective agreement itself, changing it from a two-sided act of agreement to an administrative order (Trud, August 4, 1927). The contributions by industry toward workers' compensation are wholly inadequate. In 1925-26, according to the data of the Commisariat of Labor, there were 97.6 accidents resulting in disability for every thousand workers in large-scale enterprises. Every tenth worker is injured every year.
Recent years have been characterized by a sharp increase in labor disputes, most of them being settled by compulsory rather than by conciliatory measures.
The regime within the factories has deteriorated. The factory administrative bodies are striving more and more to establish their unlimited authority. The hiring and discharge of workers is actually in the hands of the administration alone. Pre -revolutionary relations between supervisors and workers are frequently found.
The production conferences are gradually being reduced to nothing. Most of the practical proposals adopted by the workers are never carried out. Among many workers, distaste for these production conferences is nourished by the fact that the improvements which they do succeed in introducing often result in a reduction in the number of workers. As a result the production conferences are scantily attended.
In the cultural sphere, it is necessary to emphasize the problem of the schools. It is becoming harder and harder for the worker to give his children even an elementary education, to say nothing of vocational training. In almost all the working class districts there is a continually increasing shortage of schools. The fees demanded of parents for school supplies are in practice destroying free education. The shortage of schools and the inadequate provision of kindergartens are driving a considerable number of workers' children onto the streets.
"A certain conflict of interests on the question of working conditions in the factory," which was noted in a resolution of the Eleventh Congress of the party, has grown very considerably in recent years. Nevertheless, the entire practical work of the party in relation to the trade union movement in the past few years, including the work of the trade union leaders, has had such an affect on the unions that, even as the Fourteenth Congress admitted: "The trade unions have often been unable to handle their work, showing one-sidedness, at times pushing into the background their principle and most important task - to defend the economic interests of the masses organized by them and to raise in every possible way their material and spiritual level."
The situation after the Fourteenth Congress did not become better, but worse. The bureaucratization of the trade unions went anther step further.
In the staff of the elected executive bodies of ten industrial unions, the percentage of workers from the bench and nonparty militant workers is extremely small (12 to 13 percent). The immense majority of delegates to the trade union conferences are people entirely dissociated from industry (Pravda, July 3, 1927). Never before have the trade unions and rank-and-file workers stood so far from the management of socialist industry as now. The independent initiative of the mass of workers organized in the trade unions is being replaced by agreements between the secretary of the party group, the factory director, and the chairman of the factory committee (the "triangle"). The attitude of the workers to the factory and shop committees is one of distrust. Attendance at the general meetings is low.
The dissatisfaction of the worker, finding no outlet in the trade union, is driven inwards. "We mustn't be too active - if you want a bite of bread, don't talk so much." Such sayings are very common (see material of the Moscow committee, reports on the General Workers' Conferences, Informational Review, p. 30, etc.). In these circumstances, attempts on the part of the workers to improve their situation by action outside the trade union organization inevitably become more frequent. This alone imperatively dictates a radical change in the present trade union regime.
A. In the Sphere of Material Conditions
1. Cut off at the root every inclination to lengthen the eight-hour day.
Permit overtime only when absolutely unavoidable. Allow no abuses in the
employment of occasional workers; no treating of full-time workers as
"seasonal". Cancel every lengthening of the workday in unhealthy trades
where it has been introduced in violation of earlier rules.
3. We must put an end to all bureaucratic abuse of rationalization
measures. Rationalization ought to be closely linked with the appropriate
development of industry, with a planned distribution of labor power, and
with a struggle against any waste of the productive forces of the working
class - particularly failure to use the cadre of skilled workers.
4. To relieve the evil effects of unemployment: (a) Unemployment benefits
must be adjusted to actually correspond to the average wage in a given
locality; (b) In view of the duration of unemployment, the benefit period
must be extended from one year to one and a half; (c) No further reduction
in payments to the social insurance fund can be tolerated; a real fight
must be waged against the actual failure to make these payments; (d) the
spending of insurance funds upon measures of general public health and
sanitation must be stopped; (e) We must energetically combat the tendency
to "economize in relation to insured persons"; (f) We must annul all
regulations that under various pretexts deprive really unemployed workers
of their right to benefits and to registration at employment offices; (g)
We must chart our course toward an increase in benefits for the
unemployed, beginning with the industrial workers. We must have broadly
conceived and carefully worked-out plans for long-term public works upon
which the unemployed can be used to the greatest advantage to the economic
and cultural growth of the country.
5. A systematic improvement of housing conditions for the workers. Firm
carrying out of a class policy in all housing questions. No betterment of
the housing conditions of nonproletarian elements at the expense of the
workers. No eviction of discharged workers and workers whose workweek and
earnings have been cut.
6.
Energetic measures must be taken for the healthier development of housing
cooperatives. They must be made accessible to lower-paid workers. The
upper echelons of office workers must not be allowed to take over
apartments intended for industrial workers.
The housing plan of the State Planning Commission must be rejected as one
in flagrant contradiction to socialist policy. Business enterprises must
be obliged to increase their housing expenditures and their budget
allotments and credits for this purpose sufficiently so that the next five
years will see a definite improvement in the question of housing for the
workers.
7. Collective agreements should be made after real and not fictitious
discussion at workers' meetings. The coming party congress should annul
the decision of the Fourteenth Congress giving factory managements the
right of compulsory arbitration. The Labor Code must be looked upon as
the minimum and not the maximum of what labor has a right to demand.
Collective agreements must contain guarantees against cutting down the
number of industrial and office workers for the duration of the agreements
(permissible exceptions to be expressly provided for). Output norms must
be calculated on the basis of the average, not the exceptional workers and
for the whole duration of the wage contract. In any case, all changes in
the collective agreements which worsen the conditions of the workers in
comparison with previous agreements should be declared impermissible.
8. The Bureau of Wages and Standards must be brought under more effective
control by the workers and the trade unions, and the constant changing of
wages and work norms must be stopped.
9. Appropriations for safety equipment and better working conditions must
be increased. Greater penalties must be imposed for failure to observe
regulations for workers' safety.
10. All interpretations of the Labor Code must be reexamined and those
which resulted in a worsening of the conditions of labor annulled.
11. For women workers, "Equal pay for equal work." Provision to be made
for women workers to learn skilled trades.
12. Unpaid apprentice work shall be forbidden. Likewise the attempt to
reduce the wages of adolescents. Measures must be taken to improve the
conditions of their work.
13. The regime of economy must in no case be carried out at the expense of
the standard of living of the worker. We must restore to workers the
"trifles" which have been taken away (nurseries, streetcar tickets, longer
vacations, etc.).
14. The trade unions must pay increased attention to the problems of the
seasonal workers.
15. Medical care for the worker in the factory must be increased
(dispensaries, clinic, etc.).
16. In working class districts the number of schools for workers' children
must be increased.
17. A series of government measures must be taken to strengthen the
workers' consumer cooperatives.
18.
B. In the Trade Unions
C.
1. The work of the trade unions should be judged primarily by the degree
to which it protects the economic and cultural institutions of the
workers, within the existing economic limitations.
2.
3. The party organizations, in discussing measures that affect the
economic and cultural interests of the masses of workers, should first
hear reports on these matters from the Communist fractions in the trade
unions.
4.
5. Real elections, publicity, accountability, and responsibility to the
membership at all levels must be the foundation of trade union work.
6.
7. All administrative bodies in industry should be formed in real and not
fictitious agreement with the appropriate trade union organizations.
8.
9. At every trade union congress (including the all-union congress) and in
all the elective bodies of the trade unions (including the All-Union
Central Council of Trade Unions), there must be a majority of workers
directly engaged in industry. The percentage of nonparty workers in these
bodies must be raised to at least one-third.
10.
At regular intervals, a certain number of the officials of the trade union
apparatus must be sent to work in industry.
More utilization of voluntary work in trade union activities, a broader
application of the principle of voluntary work, more involvement of
workers from the factories in such work.
11. The removal of elected Communist members of trade union bodies because
of inner-party disagreements shall not be permitted.
12.
13. The absolute independence of the shop committees and local trade union
committees from the management must be guaranteed. The hiring and workers
and the transfer of workers from one kind of work to another, for periods
exceeding two weeks - all this must be carried out only after the factory
committee has been informed. The factory committee, in struggling against
abuses in this sphere, shall employ its right of appeal from the decisions
of the management to the corresponding trade union and to the grievance
commissions.
14.
15. Definite rights must be provided to workers' press correspondents, and
those who persecute such correspondents for making exposŽs must be
strictly punished.
16.
An article should be introduced into the Criminal Code punishing as a
serious crime against the state every direct or indirect, overt or
concealed persecution of a worker for criticizing, for making independent
proposals, and for voting.
17. The functions of the control commissions of the production councils
must be extended to include checking on how the decisions of the councils
are put into effect and making sure that the workers' interests are
protected in the process.
18.
19. On the question of strikes in state industries, the decision of the
Eleventh Party Congress, proposed by Lenin, remains in force.
20.
As far as strikes are concerned, the concession industries shall be
regarded as private industries.
21. The whole system of labor statistics must be revised. In its present
form it gives a false and obviously touched-up picture of the economic and
cultural conditions of the working class, and thus greatly hinders any
work in defense of its economic and cultural interests.
22.
The hard situation of the working class on the tenth anniversary of the
October Revolution is of course explained in the last analysis by the
poverty of the country, the results of intervention and blockade, the
unceasing struggle of the encircling capitalist system against the first
proletarian state. That situation cannot be changed at first blow. But
it can and must be changed if a correct policy is followed. The task of
Bolsheviks is not to paint glowing and self-satisfying pictures of our
achievements - which of course are quite real - but to raise firmly and
clearly the question of what remains to be done, of what must be done, and
what can be done, following a correct policy.
"Small scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie
continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale"[From
"Left Wing Communism - an Infantile Disorder," in Lenin's Collected
Works, vol. 31, p.24]
Either the proletarian state, relying on the high development and
electrification of industry, will be able to overcome the technological
backwardness of millions of small and very small farms, organizing them on
the basis of large-scale production and collectivization, or capitalism,
establishing a stronghold in the countryside, will undermine the
foundations of socialism in the cities.
From the point of view of Leninism, the peasantry - that is, the
fundamental peasant mass which does not exploit labor - is the key ally,
and correct relations with this ally are crucial for the security of the
proletarian dictatorship and, consequently, for the fate of the socialist
revolution. For the stage we are passing through, Lenin most accurately
formulated our task with regard to the peasants in the following words:
"To come to an agreement with the middle peasant - while not for a moment
renouncing the struggle against the kulak and at the same time firmly
relying solely on the poor peasant"[Collected Works, vol. 28, p.
191].
A revision of Lenin on the peasant question is being carried out by the
Stalin - Bukharin group along the following main lines:
1. Abandonment of one of the central tenets of Marxism, that only a
powerful socialist industry can help the peasants form agriculture along
collectivist lines.
2.
3. Underestimation of the farmhands and poor peasants as the social base
of the proletarian dictatorship in the countryside.
4.
5. In agricultural policy, placing our bets on the so-called "economically
strong" peasant, i.e., in reality on the kulak.
6.
7. Ignoring or directly denying the petty-bourgeois character of peasant
property and peasant agriculture - a departure from the Marxist position
in the direction of the theories of the Social Revolutionaries.
8.
9. Underestimation of the capitalist elements in the present development
of the countryside, and hushing up of the class differentiation that are
taking place among the poor peasants.
10.
11. The creation of consoling theories to the effect that "the kulak and
kulak organizations will have no chance anyway, because the general
framework of evolution in our country is predetermined by the structure of
the proletarian dictatorship" (Bukharin, The Road to Socialism and the
Worker-Peasant Alliance, p. 49).
12.
13. The policy orientation that "kulak cooperative nuclei can be
integrated into our system" (Ibid., p. 49). "The problem may be expressed
thus: that it is necessary to set free the economic possibilities of the
well-off peasant, the economic possibilities of the kulak" (Pravda, April
24, 1925).
14.
15. Attempts to counterpose Lenin's "cooperative plan" to his plan of
electrification. According to Lenin himself, only these two plans in
combination could ensure a transition to socialism.
16.
Relying on these revisionist tendencies in official policy,
representatives of the new bourgeoisie have established connections with
certain sectors of our state apparatus and are openly aspiring to switch
our whole policy in the countryside onto the capitalist path. At the same
time, the kulaks and their ideological defenders hide all their ambitions
under a pretense of concern for the development of the productive forces,
increasing the volume of commodity production, would repress and retard
the development of the productive forces of the entire remaining mass of
peasant farms.
In spite of the comparatively swift reconstruction process in
agriculture, commodity production from peasant agriculture is very low.
In 1925-26, the total volume of goods sent to market was only 64 percent
of the prewar level, the volume exported only 24 percent of the export in
1913. The cause of this, aside from the increasing total consumption of
the village itself, lies in the scissors between agricultural and
industrial prices and the rapid accumulation of foodstuffs by the kulaks.
Even the five-year plan is compelled to recognize that "lack of industrial
products, in general, places a definite limit on the equivalent exchange
of goods between town and country, lowering the possible volume of
agricultural products brought to the market" (p. 117). Thus the lagging
of industry retards the growth of agriculture and in particular the growth
of agricultural commodity production. It undermines the bond (smychka)
between town and countryside and leads to a swift class differentiation
among the peasants.
The views of the Opposition on disputed questions of peasant policy have
been confirmed wholly and absolutely. The partial corrections made in the
"general line," under pressure of sharp criticism from the Opposition,
have not checked the continuing deviation of the official policy in the
direction of the "economically strong peasant." To prove this, it is
sufficient to recall the Fourth Congress of the Soviets, in the resolution
on Kalinin's report, had not one single word to say about class
differentiation in the countryside or the growth of the kulak.
There can be but one result of such a policy: we shall lose the poor
peasants and fail to win the middle ones.
In recent years the rural districts have gone far in the
direction of capitalist differentiation.
The groups that tilled little or land have diminished during the last
four years by 35 to 45 percent. The group that tilled from 17 to 28 acres
increased at the same time 100 to 120 percent. The group that tilled 28
acres or more increased 150 to 200 percent. The decline in the percentage
of group that tilled little or no land is due very largely to their ruin
and dissolution. Thus, in Siberia, during one year, 15.8 percent of those
tilling no land, and 3.8 percent of those filling less than 5.6 acres,
disappeared. In the Northern Caucasus, 14.1 percent of those with no land
disappeared, and 3.8 percent of those with less than 5.6 acres.
The advancement of horse-less and tool-less peasant households into the
lower stratum of the middle peasantry is proceeding extremely slowly. To
this day in the Soviet Union as a whole, 30 to 40 percent of the peasant
households continue to be horse-less and tool-less, and the bulk of these
fall into the category of those who till very small amounts of land.
The distribution of the main instruments of production in the Northern
Caucasus is as follows: To the weakest 50 percent of peasant households
belongs 15 percent of the means of production. To the middle group,
constituting 35 percent of the peasant households, belongs 35 percent.
And to the highest group, constituting 15 percent of peasant households,
belongs 50 percent of the means of production. The same pattern in the
distribution of the means of production is to be observed in other regions
(Siberia, the Ukraine, etc.).
This record of inequality in the distribution of the land and of the
means of production is reasserted in the unequal distribution of grain
reserves among the different groups of peasant households. On April 1,
1926, 58 percent of all the surplus grain in the country was in the hands
of 6 percent of the peasant households (Statistical Review, 1927, no. 4,
p. 15).
The renting of land assumes larger and larger proportions every year.
The renting proprietors are, in the majority of cases, the peasants who
till a lot of land and who own means of production. In the immense
majority of cases, the fact that the land is rented is concealed in order
to avoid taxes. The peasants who till little land, lacking tools and
animals, work for the most part with hired tools and hired animals. The
conditions both of renting land and of hiring tools and animals amount
almost to slavery. Side by side with extortion in kind, money usury is
growing.
The continuous splitting up of peasant properties does not weakened but
strengthens the process of class differentiation. Machinery and credit,
instead of serving as levers for the socialization of agriculture, nearly
always fall into the hands of the kulaks and the better-off peasants, and
thus contribute to the exploitation of the farmhands, the poor peasants,
and the weaker middle peasants.
Besides this concentration of land and means of production in the hands
of the upper strata, the latter are employing hired labor to a steadily
increasing degree.
On the other hand, a larger and larger number of laborers for hire are
being sloughed off by the poor peasant households and, in part, by the
middle peasants. This is the result either of the total ruin and
dissolution of the household or the forced departure of individual members
from peasant families. These surplus farmhands fall into servitude to the
kulak or to the "strong" middle peasant, or go away to the towns, where,
in considerable numbers, they find no employment whatever.
In spite of these processes, which have gone very far, and which lead to
a reduction in the relative economic weight of the middle peasant, the
middle peasant continues to be numerically the largest group in the
countryside. To win the middle peasant over to a socialist policy in
agriculture is one of the most important tasks of the proletarian
dictatorship. Meanwhile, the "wager on the stronger peasant" means, in
fact, placing our bets on the further disintegration of this middle layer.
Only by paying the necessary attention to the farmhand, only by orienting
toward the poor peasant, in alliance with the middle peasant, only by
firmly combating the kulak, only be charting a course toward
industrialization and toward class cooperatives and a class credit system
in the countryside, will we be able to draw the middle peasant into the
work of the socialist transformation of agriculture.
In the class struggle now going on in the countryside the
party must stand, not only in words but in deeds, at the head of the
farmhands, the poor peasants, and the basic mass of the middle peasants,
and organize them against the exploitative aims of the kulak.
To strengthen and reinforce the class position of the agricultural
proletariat - which is part of the working class - the same series of
measures must be taken which we indicated in the section on the conditions
of the industrial workers.
Agricultural credit must cease to be for the most part a privilege of the
better-off circles in the villages. We must put an end to the present
situation, in which the funds for assistance to the poor peasants,
insignificant enough already, often are not spent for their intended
purpose, but go to serve the better-off and middle groups.
The growth of individual farming must be offset by a more rapid
development of collective farming. It is necessary to appropriate funds
systematically year after year to assist the poor peasants who have
organized in collectives.
At the same time, we must give more systematic help to poor peasants who
are not in collectives, by freeing them entirely from taxation, by
assigning them suitable plots of land and providing credit for
agricultural implements, and by bringing them into the agricultural
cooperatives. Instead of the slogan, "Create nonparty cadres of peasant
activists by revitalizing the soviets" (Stalin-Molotov), a slogan which is
devoid of all class content and which in reality strengthen the dominant
role of the upper strata in the villages, we must adopt the slogan, Build
a cadre of nonparty activists among the farmhands, poor peasants, and
middle peasants who are close to the poor.
We must have a real, central, planned, universal, and durable
organization of the poor, centered upon vital political and economic
problems, such as elections, tax campaigns, a voice in the distribution of
credit, machinery, etc., land division and land utilization, the creation
of cooperatives, and the use of funds allotted to the village poor for
forming cooperatives.
The party ought to promote by all means the economic advancement of the
middle peasants - by a wise policy of prices for grain, by the
organization of credits and cooperatives accessible to them, and by the
systematic and gradual introduction of this most numerous peasant group to
the benefits of large-scale, mechanized, collective agriculture.
The task of the party in relation to the growing kulak strata ought to
consist in an all-sided limitation of their efforts of exploitation. We
must permit no departures from the articles of our constitution depriving
the exploiter elements of electoral rights in the soviets. The following
measures are necessary: a steeply progressive tax system; legislative
measures to protect hired labor and regulate the wages of agricultural
workers; a correct class policy in regard to land division and
utilization; the same thing in regard to supplying tractors and other
instruments of production to the villages.
The growing system of land rental in the countryside, the existing method
of land utilization, according to which rural societies - standing outside
of all Soviet leadership and control and falling more and more under the
influence of the kulak - dispose of the land, the resolution adopted by
the Fourth Congress of the Soviets for "indemnification" at the time of
land redistribution - all this is undermining the foundations of the
nationalization of the land.
One of the most essential measures for reinforcing the nationalization of
the land is the subordination of these rural societies to the local
institutions of the state and the establishment of firm control by the
local soviets, purified of kulak elements, over all questions of the
division and utilization of the land. The purpose of this control should
be a maximum defense of the interests of the poor and the weak middle
peasants against domination by the kulaks. On the basis of our present
experience we must work out a series of supplementary measures to
eliminate kulak domination of the rural societies. It is necessary in
particular that the kulak, as a landlord, should be wholly and absolutely,
not only in words but in fact, subject to supervision and control by the
institutions of Soviet power in the countryside.
The party must level a jarring blow against all those currents tending
toward the annulment or undermining of the nationalization of the land -
one of the foundation pillars of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The existing system of a single agricultural tax ought to be
changed in the direction of freeing 40 to 50 percent of poorer and poorest
peasant families from all taxation, without any additional tax being
imposed upon the bulk of the middle peasants. The dates of tax collection
should be accommodated to the interests of the lower groups of taxpayers.
A much larger sum ought to be appropriated for the creation of state and
collective farms. Maximum advantages must be offered to the newly
organized collective farms and other forms of collectivism. People
deprived of electoral rights must not be allowed to be members of
collective farms. All the work of the cooperatives ought to be inspired
by the aim of transforming small-scale production into large-scale
collective production. A firm class policy must be followed in supplying
agricultural machinery, and a special struggle must be waged against fake
societies for machinery supply.
Careful attention must be paid to land distribution; above all, land must
be allotted to the collective farms and the poor peasant farms, with
maximum protection of their interests.
The prices of grain and other agricultural products ought to guarantee to
the poor and the basic mass of middle peasants the possibility, at the
very least, of maintaining their farms at the present level and gradually
improving them. Measures should be taken to abolish the disparity between
autumn and spring grain prices. For this disparity counts heavily against
the rural poor and gives all the advantage to the upper layers.
It is necessary not only to considerably increase the appropriations for
the poor peasants' fund, but also radically change the whole direction of
agricultural credit so as to provide the poor and weak middle peasant with
cheap, long-term credits, and to abolish the existing system of guarantees
and references.
The task of socialist construction in the countryside is
to transform agricultural along the lines of large-scale, mechanized
collective production. For the bulk of the peasants the simplest road to
this end is cooperation, as Lenin described in his work "On Cooperation".
This is an enormous advantage which the proletarian dictatorship and the
Soviet system as a whole give to the peasant. Only a process of growing
industrialization of agriculture can create the broad basis for such
socialist cooperation (or collectivization). Without a technical
revolution in production methods - that is to say, without agricultural
machinery, without the rotation of crops, without artificial fertilizers,
etc. - no successful and broad work in the direction of a real
collectivization of agriculture is possible.
Cooperative buying and selling will be a road to socialism on in the
event that: (1) this process takes place under the immediate economic and
political influence of the socialist elements, especially of large-scale
industry and the trade unions; and (2) this process of making the trade
functions of agriculture cooperative gradually leads to the
collectivization of agriculture itself. The class character of the
agricultural cooperatives will be determined not only by the numerical
weight of the different groups of the cooperating peasantry, but more
particularly by their relative economic weight. The task of the party is
to see that agricultural cooperation constitutes a real union of the poor
and middle groups of the peasants, and is a weapon in the struggle of
those elements against the growing economic power of the kulak. We must
systematically and persistently involve the agricultural proletariat in
the task of building the cooperatives.
A successful cooperative structure is conceivable only if the
participants enjoy a maximum of independent initiative. Proper relations
by the cooperatives with large-scale industry and the proletarian state
presuppose a normal regime in the cooperative organizations, excluding the
bureaucratic methods of regulation.
In view of the obvious departure of the party leadership from the
fundamental Bolshevik course in the countryside, its tendency to rely on
the well-off peasant and the kulak; in view of the covering up of this
policy by anti-proletarian speeches about "poor man's illusions,"
"sponging," and "do-nothingism," and about the alleged disinclination of
the poor peasant to defend the Soviet Union - in view of these things, it
is more than ever necessary to remember the words of our party program.
While unequivocally asserting the decisive importance for us of the
alliance with the middle peasant, our program clearly and succinctly
states: "The All-Russia Communist Party in its work in the village, as
formerly, looks for support to the proletarian and semiproletarian groups
there, and in the first place organizes them into an independent force,
creating party cells in the villages, organizations of the rural poor,
special types of trade unions of village proletarians and
semiproletarians, and so on, bringing them into closer contact with the
urban proletariat, and freeing them from the influence of the rural
bourgeoisie and the interests of the small property owners."
"A large-scale machine industry capable of reorganizing
agriculture is the only material basis that is possible for socialism"
[Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 32, p.459].
The basic condition for our socialist development at the present
preliminary stage and in the present historical situation - capitalist
encirclement and a delay in the world revolution - is a rate of
industrialization sufficiently rapid to ensure that, in the near future,
at least the following problems would be solved:
1. The material positions of the proletariat within the country must be
strengthened both absolutely and relatively (growth in the number of
employed workers, improvement in the material level of the working class
and, especially, increasing the amount of living space per capita to meet
basic health standards).
2.
3. Industry, transport, and power plants must increase operations in order
to at least keep pace with the growing demands of the country as a whole
and not to lag behind the growing economic potential.
4.
5. It must be made possible for agriculture to attain a higher technical
level, so that it can provide industry with an expanding supply of raw
materials.
6.
7. In regard to the development of productive forces, technological
progress, and higher living standards for the working class and the
toiling masses, the Soviet Union must not fall further behind the
capitalist countries in the years ahead, but must catch up with them.
8.
9. Industrialization must be sufficient to ensure the defense of the
country and in particular the adequate growth of the war industries.
10.
11. The socialist, state-owned, and cooperative elements must increase
systematically, forcing out some and subordinating and transforming others
of the presocialist economic elements (capitalist and precapitalist).
12.
In spite of our considerable success in the spheres of industry,
electrification, and transport, industrialization is far from having
attained that development which is necessary and possible. The present
rate of industrialization and the rate indicated for the coming years are
obviously inadequate.
There is not, and cannot be, a policy which would permit us to solve all
our difficulties at one stroke, or leap over a prolonged period of
systematic elevation of our economic and cultural level. But our very
cultural and economic backwardness requires a rational and timely
mobilization of all our accumulated reserves, the correct utilization of
all our resources for the fastest possible industrialization of the
country. The chronic lagging of industry, as well as transport,
electrification, and construction, behind the demands and needs of the
population, the economy, and the social system as a whole, holds all the
economic circulation in the country in a terrible vise. It reduces the
sale and export of the marketable part of our agricultural production. It
restricts imports to extremely narrow limits, drives up prices and
production costs, causes the dangerous growth of unemployment and the
deterioration of housing conditions. It undermines the bond between
industry and agriculture and weakens the country's defense capability.
The inadequate tempo of industrial development leads in turn to a
retardation of the growth of agriculture. Yet no industrialization is
possible without decisively raising the level of productive forces in
agriculture and increasing agricultural production for the market.
The necessary acceleration of industrialization is
impossible without a systematic lowering of production costs and of
wholesale and retail prices on industrial goods, bringing them closer to
world prices. That would mean real progress, both in the sense of
advancing our production to a higher technical level and in the sense of
better satisfying the needs of the masses of working people. It is time
to put an end to the senselessness and indecent outcry about the
Opposition's alleged desire to raise prices. The party is absolutely
unanimous in the desire to lower prices. But the desire alone is not
enough. Policies should be judged not by intention, but by result. The
results of the present struggle to lower prices have more than once
compelled even important members of the leadership to raise the question
of whether large sums of money were not being lost through this policy.
"Where did the billion rubles go?" Bukharin was inquiring in January of
this year. "What becomes of the difference between wholesale and retail
prices?" asked Rudzutak, speaking after him on the same theme (Politburo
minutes, March 3, 1926, pp. 20-21). Given the chronic shortage of goods,
the sweeping and clumsily bureaucratic lowering of wholesale prices, since
it does not in the majority of cases reach down to the worker and the
peasant, entails a loss to the state industry of hundreds of millions of
rubles. The consequent widening of the scissors between wholesale and
retail prices, especially where the private trader is concerned, is so
monstrous that it would be entirely possible, following a correct policy,
to keep part of this commercial mark-up in the hands of state industry.
The irrefutable conclusion from the whole economic experience of the last
few years is the need for the price disproportion to be overcome as
quickly as possible, the volume of industrial goods to be increased, and
the rate of industrial development to be accelerated. That is the main
road to a real lowering of wholesale and retail prices and above all to a
lowering of the cost of production, which in recent years has shown a
tendency to rise rather than fall.
Chapter 3
The Peasantry - the Agrarian Question and Socialist Construction
Class Differentiation Among the Peasants
Practical Proposals
Cooperation
Chapter 4
State Industry and the Building of Socialism
The rate of Industrial Development
Prices