Concerning Lenin's NEP

[DaComm]

Could a non-stalinist but still Authoritarian Socialist answer me what was the point of Lenin's New Economic Policy, and are councilism (soviets) and other pre-military communism concepts customary in Leninist Ideaology?

[which doctor]

The primary motivation for the NEP was to more effectively deal with the food-supply problem that had plagued Russia since WW1. Previously, the Bolshevik gov't had tried numerous other methods to gather enough grain, including requisitioning it directly from the peasant, or enacting price controls, but the peasants would often hide their grain, or hold onto it with the hope that the prices would go up and they could sell it for more. The introduction of free-market reforms made the peasants more willing to sell their grain surpluses, and gave them an incentive to produce more since now they could sell it at market prices, instead of having it taken by soldiers or selling it at fixed prices.

[Zanthorus]

Basically what whichdoctor said although I don't know why you needed to ask "non-stalinist but still authoritarian socialist[s]" since from what I recall it's generally agreed even among bourgeois historians what caused the NEP.

Of course the lesson they draw is that communism can only be secured by highly authoritarian means to relieve people of their private property, ignoring the fact that it was the Bolsheviks who organised land grabs by the peasantry of the large estates instead of nationalising/socialising the land. I really think they stabbed themselves in the back with that one by replacing the large landowners with a middle and lower strata of property owning peasants whose class position was then directly opposed to the achievment of communism.

[Dave B]

To do a bit of a laid back analysis of this, rather than an anally retentive one.


I think another aspect or part of the NEP system, or whatever, that is often ignored was the industrial concession system.



Where the already nationalised means of production and natural resources eg factories, mines and forests etc were rented or leased out to ‘ordinary’ or bourgeois capitalists for them to exploit and make a profit out of the workers in their own and more familiar way etc.


To make an advanced volume III analysis of this;In this system; the profit would be split between the ‘bourgeois capitalists’ who in this case would be the ‘functioning capitalist’ and would receive ‘profit of enterprise’.


And the rest would go to the state and Bolshevik state capitalist class as technically a mixture of ‘interest’ or ‘rent’ on loaned capital and ‘surplus profit’, which technically ‘originates’ from differential ground rent, or as Lenin seems to put it ‘superprofits’, which could be an adequate Russian translation of ‘surplus profit’.



To make this other more ‘clear cut’ or obvious type of capitalism more acceptable Lenin attempted to honey coat it by describing it merely as just another type of or variation of state capitalism or type II state capitalism, which as state capitalism, was of course OK.

However there were still two types of state capitalism, I & II.

This idea played an important part in Stalin’s (sorry) and Led Zeppelin’s refutation of the idea that Russia was state capitalism.

As ‘comrades’ Joe and Led both claimed that when Lenin was talking about state capitalism he was only talking about the concession system.

And that when the concession system was abandoned later, as it substantially was, so did all vestiges of state capitalism.


Hence Trotsky wasn’t talking bollocks in 1930.


Eg


http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html)

Anyway lets allow Lenin to put it his own way with the explanatory footnote



[102] Lenin began to work on The Tax in Kind pamphlet at the end of March 1921, just after the Tenth Party Congress, and finished it on April 21. He attached great importance to its earliest publication and distribution, because it explained the necessity of transition to the New Economic Policy.


In early May, it was published as a pamphlet, and was soon after carried by the magazine Krasnaya Nov No. 1; it later appeared in pamphlet form in many towns, and was reprinted in part and in full in central and local papers. In 1921, it was translated into German, English and French.

A special resolution of the Central Committee instructed all regional, gubernia and uyezd Party committees to use the pamphlet to explain the New Economic Policy to the working people.


V. I. Lenin THE TAX IN KIND





Concessions are the simplest example of how the Soviet government directs the development of capitalism into the channels of state capitalism and "implants" state capitalism. We all agree now that concessions are necessary, but have we all thought about the implications?

What are concessions under the Soviet system, viewed in the light of the above-mentioned forms of economy and their interrelations? They are an agreement, an alliance, a bloc between the Soviet, i.e., proletarian, state power and state capitalism against the small-proprietor (patriarchal and petty-bourgeois) element.


The concessionaire is a capitalist. He conducts his business on capitalist lines, for profit, and is willing to enter into an agreement with the proletarian government in order to obtain superprofits or raw materials which he cannot otherwise obtain, or can obtain only with great difficulty. Soviet power gains by the development of the productive forces, and by securing an increased quantity of goods immediately, or within a very short period.


We have, say, a hundred oilfields, mines and forest tracts. We cannot develop all of them for we lack the machines, the food and the transport. This is also why we are doing next to nothing to develop the other territories. Owing to the insufficient development of the large enterprises the small-proprietor element is more pronounced in all its forms, and this is reflected in the deterioration of the surrounding (and later the whole of) peasant farming, the disruption of its productive forces, the decline in its confidence in the Soviet power, pilfering and widespread petty (the most dangerous) profiteering, etc.


By "implanting" state capitalism in the form of concessions, the Soviet government strengthens large-scale production as against petty production, advanced production as against backward production, and machine production as against hand production. It also obtains a larger quantity of the products of large-scale industry (its share of the output), and strengthens state regulated economic relations as against the anarchy of petty-bourgeois relations. The moderate and cautious application of the concessions policy will undoubtedly help us quickly to improve (to a modest extent) the state of industry and the condition of the workers and peasants.


We shall, of course, have all this at the price of certain sacrifices and the surrender to the capitalist of many millions of poods of very valuable products. The scale and the conditions under which concessions cease to be a danger and are turned to our advantage depend on the relation of forces and are decided in the struggle, for concessions are also a form of struggle, and are a continuation of the class struggle in another form, and in no circumstances are they a substitution of class peace for class war. Practice will determine the methods of struggle.
Compared with other forms of state capitalism within the Soviet system, concessions are perhaps the most simple and clear-cut form of state capitalism.


http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TXK21.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TXK21.html)



This explains why he could say in early 1918 that;



"State capitalism would be a gigantic step forward.."


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm)


Whereas in 1922;



Now that I have emphasised the fact that as early as 1918 we regarded state capitalism as a possible line of retreat, I shall deal with the results of our New Economic Policy……….




http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/04b.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/04b.htm)

Whether or not Lenin actually ever stated in ‘early 1918’ that the Bolsheviks might have to retreat to a concession ‘type II’, or more clear cut, state capitalism, whilst of course retaining the model and ‘copy’ of German Junker state capitalism, is perhaps a bit of a moot point.


Although to be fair to Lenin, as I always attempt to do, he did in fact speculate in ‘early 1918’ that the Bolsheviks may have to fall back on the assistance of the bourgeoisie or more strictly the so called real capitalist sluts and ‘profiteers of enterprise’ to teach them how to run capitalism and exploit the workers.


.

[DaComm]

(Directed at which doctor)

I comprehend what you are telling me, however, ideally would this willingness to submit their grain dissepate as the ability to sell at market pricing would? Wouldn't this transifx the idea of Capitalism into the hearts & minds of the peasants, and make them potentially hostile to real Socialism? (Note, I am not prokoving an argument, I am trying to further my learning)

[ComradeOm]

Wouldn't this transifx the idea of Capitalism into the hearts & minds of the peasants, and make them potentially hostile to real Socialism?Implicit in the adoption of the NEP is the admission that the Russian peasantry was already hostile to socialism. Had they not been then a retreat to state capitalism would not have been necessary. Herein lies one of the major contradictions of the Russian Revolution


...ignoring the fact that it was the Bolsheviks who organised land grabs by the peasantry of the large estates instead of nationalising/socialising the landThe Bolsheviks did not "organise" the land committees that redistributed the estates. The Decree on Land merely ratified/legalised a movement that had, independently of any political party, been ongoing for months

Your broader point is correct though and very astute