Notes on Russia: Squaring the circle

Alongside the development of Russia as a great capitalist trading power it is interesting to look at the attempt made by Stalin a few years before his death to square Russian policy with Marxist principles.

Frederick Engels in his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (1892) had written that with the capture of power and “the seizing of the means of production of society, production of commodities is done away with, and simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer”. He also wrote that as a first step “The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property.”

Someone put the question to Stalin, why was it that years after capturing power the Russian Communist Party still continued commodity production, i.e. production of articles for sale. Stalin, in his Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (Published in Moscow in 1952) set out to answer the question. He did so by arguing that in the first of the two passages quoted above Engels meant all the means of production, and the Russian Government had in fact taken possession of only some of them, the industrial means of production, but not the agricultural means of production.

This in itself is a hollow excuse as far as Engels is concerned because Engels certainly did not write, or think, that 35 or more years after gaining political power an essential part of the means of production would still not have been taken over.

But Stalin had another and even more curious defence. It was that Engels had had in mind the one country, Britain, in which agriculture had in 1892 been “capitalised” and concentrated; and Stalin then expressed doubt whether Britain could abolish commodity production, because of its dependence on foreign trade.

Why Stalin’s thoughts were concerned with the problem of foreign trade was made clear elsewhere in Stalin’s book because he had realised that Russia too was becoming more dependent on foreign trade. He wrote: –

“. . . it will soon come to pass that these countries will not only be in no need of imports from capitalist countries but will themselves feel the necessity of finding an outside market for their surplus products.” (p. 36)

By “these countries” Stalin meant Russia and the other miscalled “socialist” countries.

Though Stalin’s tortuous “explanation” may have satisfied his questioner it landed him in the further dilemma that while Engels had seen the capture of power and the ending of commodity production bringing to an end “ the mastery of the product over the producer”, for Mr. Stalin the producers in Russia and the other countries were increasingly coming under the “necessity” of finding foreign markets for exports, just like the rest of the capitalist world.

The recent big increase of prices of meat and other foods in Russia in order to increase the income of the collective farms and peasants and encourage them to raise output and efficiency of production, shows that the problem of agriculture is still far from being settled. British capitalism solved the problem in 1846 from the standpoint of the industrial capitalists by abolishing the corn laws which protected the landed interest and maintained high food prices. Agriculture was allowed to decline, cheap food was imported from abroad which kept prices (and wages) low and enlarged the profits of the manufacturers and shipowners. Russia now is in a somewhat similar position since the Russian Government could lower its own food prices if it allowed the importation of cheap food from America and other countries in which agricultural production is more efficient and cheaper. But this of course would involve problems even greater than those faced by British capitalism over a century ago.

To put the matter into perspective from a socialist point of view it need only be added that trade problems are capitalist not socialist. The idea of “socialism in one country” is a false one. In a capitalist world there can only be capitalist economy, with its associated need for commodity production and foreign markets. Socialism is an international concept and in that framework such problems do not exist.
H.