Bukharin and Socialism in One Country

[Asero]

I hear that Stalin adopted much of Socialism in One Country from Bukharin. Does anybody know what Bukharin's conception with Socialism in One Country was and what seperated it from Stalin's perception in Socialism of One Country?

I'm not asking for a rebuttal of Socialism in One Country here, just what how Bukharin and Stalin differed on the subject.

[Dave B]

There is I think obviously a lot of Trotskyist orientated preoccupation with the 'socialism in one country' thing which has taken up voluminous essays and debates between Leninist etc.

It might be a bit off point but what is often missed I think is a statement by Lenin in a keynote speech in which he said it was in fact theoretically possible.


V. I. Lenin
Part III: Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)


And I must say on this score that criticism was expressed of certain conclusions drawn from my speech on the relation between state capitalism and free small-scale exchange; but no one has criticised my propositions, nor were they criticised in any of the notes I have received (I have read most of them, and they run to several dozen).

Direct transition to communism would have been possible if ours was a country with a predominantly—or, say, highly developed—large-scale industry, and a high level of large scale production in agriculture, otherwise the transition to communism is economically impossible.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/10thcong/ch03.htm

[Dave B]

V. I. Lenin
Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution

14 October, 1921

Borne along on the crest of the wave of enthusiasm, rousing first the political enthusiasm and then the military enthusiasm of the people, we expected to accomplish economic tasks just as great as the political and military tasks we had accomplished by relying directly on this enthusiasm.



We expected—or perhaps it would be truer to say that we presumed without having given it adequate consideration—to be able to organise the state production and the state distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country directly as ordered by the proletarian state.

Experience has proved that we were wrong. It appears that a number of transitional stages were necessary—state capitalism and socialism—in order to prepare—to prepare by many years of effort—for the transition to communism.



Not directly relying on enthusiasm, but aided by the enthusiasm engendered by the great revolution, and on the basis of personal interest, personal incentive and business principles, we must first set to work in this small peasant country to build solid gangways to socialism by way of state capitalism.



Otherwise we shall never get to communism, we shall never bring scores of millions of people to communism.



That is what experience, the objective course of the development of the revolution, has taught us.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/14.htm


????????????????

[Dave B]

It is not easy to work out what in fact was exactly Bukharin’s 1918 attitude or criticism to Lenin’s gigantic step forward of state capitalism without having access to original material.

One clearly cannot rely at all on lying Leninist ‘historians’.


However in early 1918? Bukharin immediately wrote a glowing and ironic/sarcastic review of Lenin’s THE STATE AND REVOLUTION; which was of course published around the time that Lenin was also putting flesh on the bone of his Bolshevik state capitalism model.

I have not read Bukharin’s review but it would be interesting to know what he focused on.

Perhaps it included the passage below in chapter 4?


2. Criticism of the Draft of the Erfurt Programme



In analyzing Marxist teachings on the state, the criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Programme,[4] (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch04.htm#fw04) sent by Engels to Kautsky on June 29, 1891, and published only 10 years later in Neue Zeit, cannot be ignored; for it is with the opportunist views of the Social-Democrats on questions of state organization that this criticism is mainly concerned.

We shall note in passing that Engels also makes an exceedingly valuable observation on economic questions, which shows how attentively and thoughtfully he watched the various changes occurring in modern capitalism, and how for this reason he was able to foresee to a certain extent the tasks of our present, the imperialist, epoch. Here is that observation: referring to the word “planlessness” (Planlosigkeit), used in the draft programme, as characteristic of capitalism, Engels wrote:

"When we pass from joint-stock companies to trusts which assume control over, and monopolize, whole industries, it is not only private production that ceases, but also planlessness."

(Neue Zeit, Vol. XX, 1, 1901-02, p.8)

Here was have what is most essential in the theoretical appraisal of the latest phase of capitalism, i.e., imperialism, namely, that capitalism becomes monopoly capitalism.

The latter must be emphasized because the erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state-monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can now be called "state socialism" and so on, is very common.

The trusts, of course, never provided, do not now provide, and cannot provide complete planning. But however much they do plan, however much the capitalist magnates calculate in advance the volume of production on a national and even on an international scale, and however much they systematically regulate it, we still remain under capitalism--at its new stage, it is true, but still capitalism, without a doubt.

The “proximity” of such capitalism to socialism should serve genuine representatives of the proletariat as an argument proving the proximity, facility, feasibility, and urgency of the socialist revolution, and not at all as an argument for tolerating the repudiation of such a revolution and the efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, something which all reformists are trying to do.


https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch04.htm

[Tim Redd]

"Direct transition to communism would have been possible if ours was a country with a predominantly—or, say, highly developed—large-scale industry, and a high level of large scale production in agriculture, otherwise the transition to communism is economically impossible." - V. I. Lenin
Part III: Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)

Communism would seem to be defined as: 1) the abolition of classes, or everyone is of the same class; 2) the elimination of all exploitation and oppression; 3) the withering away of the political state as an instrument of to enforce the rule of one class over another and to defend against external enemies.

Given this definition, the realization of communism wouldn't exist simply because after a proletarian revolution there was "highly developed—large-scale industry, and a high level of large scale production in agriculture".

[Die Neue Zeit]

I hear that Stalin adopted much of Socialism in One Country from Bukharin. Does anybody know what Bukharin's conception with Socialism in One Country was and what seperated it from Stalin's perception in Socialism of One Country?

I'm not asking for a rebuttal of Socialism in One Country here, just what how Bukharin and Stalin differed on the subject.

Perhaps that hearing is incorrect. I don't think Bukharin had a conception of socialism in one country at all, just the traditional framework of a world order patch of self-sufficient socialist countries.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The idea of 'socialism in one country' is clearly - if we use logic rather than dogma - one that depends entirely on the country. As my namesake was quoted above as saying, if a country can be more or less autarkical, then there is some (theoretical) possibility of SIOC, whereas the likes of North Korea and Cuba clearly never stood a chance of achieving that.

As it is, I guess a further complication is how you define socialism. If you define it as state control of a few industries then your expectations will be far lower (And therefore easier to satisfy) than if you essentially view socialism as synonymous with communism.

[Dave B]

FYI Bukharin did write;

The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period (1920)

Which should be, you would think, a seminal theoretical work for the “anti-state capitalism theory” of neo-Leninists; as Bukharin tortuously tries to make sense of and square the circle of orthodox post August1917 state capitalist Leninism.

It is replete with self confessed paradoxes and upside down, back to front and reversed antitheses dialectics; and thus for me defies interpretation.

It is comprehensive and well sourced though, and in my opinion a genuine albeit a hopeless attempt to make theoretical “sense” of it all.

You can understand why it has been sent down the neo Leninist memory hole though as it is more of an apology (or even denial?) of Lenin’s own state capitalist theory.

[Tim Redd]

"Direct transition to communism would have been possible if ours was a country with a predominantly—or, say, highly developed—large-scale industry, and a high level of large scale production in agriculture, otherwise the transition to communism is economically impossible." - V. I. Lenin
Part III: Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)


Communism would seem to be defined as: 1) the abolition of classes, or everyone is of the same class; 2) the elimination of all exploitation and oppression; 3) the withering away of the political state as an instrument of to enforce the rule of one class over another and to defend against external enemies.

Given this definition, the realization of communism wouldn't exist simply because after a proletarian revolution there was "highly developed—large-scale industry, and a high level of large scale production in agriculture".

On a rethink, it seems Lenin was making the point that "highly developed—large-scale industry, and a high level of large scale production in agriculture" are necessary not necessarily sufficient conditions for the realization of communism. I.e the other words the 3 things, that I delineated are required supplements to what Lenin lays out as necessary conditions for the realization of communism.

[Dave B]

Bukharin's initial objection to the designation, policy, model of state capitalism may have been rooted in his own 1915 material.

He wrote an essay on it in 1918 but I haven’t read it yet


Nikolai Bukharin 1915

Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State




Thus, a system of collective capitalism is created, which to a certain extent is opposed to the entire structure of capitalism in its earlier forms. The separate capitalist disappears: he becomes a Verbandskapitalist a member of an organization; he no longer competes, but instead cooperates with his “compatriots”; for the center of gravity in the competitive struggle is carried over into the world market, whereas within the country competition dies out.

Such a structure of the ruling classes is accompanied by a corresponding change in the “state machine”: the state power becomes the supreme organization ………… constitute a homogeneous group. The ……… oligarchy rules the trusts; ……… oligarchy rules the country.

This is simply another organization of one and the same clique. It is understandable that in these circumstances the earlier opposition to the idea of “state socialism” (i.e., state capitalism) should vanish.

By transferring management of the state-capitalist trust to a formally independent state (we have in mind economic regulation) in exchange for a guaranteed income, ………changes nothing essential.


For socialism is regulated production, regulated by society, not by the state (state socialism is about as useful as leaky boots); it is the elimination of class contradictions, not their intensification.

On its own, the regulation of production is far from signifying socialism: it occurs in every familial economy, among every slave-owning natural-economic group.

What we in fact expect in the near future is state capitalism. A single protest might be raised against such a designation, namely, that the logical extreme and pure type of the relations now emerging would entail the elimination of hired labor.

The worker would receive rations, “aliments,” not a monetary equivalent of the value of labor power. Just as market prices are replaced by regulated distribution of the product, so the wage form would disappear and along with it hired labor as such. The worker would become a slave. And since hired labor represents one of the most characteristic features of capitalism, it is impossible to use the term capitalism to designate relations that involve the elimination of hired labor.



https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1915/state.htm

V. I. Lenin
Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B.)[1] (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm#fw01)
March 27-April 2, 1922



The third, supplementary lesson is on the question of state capitalism. It is a pity Comrade Bukharin is not present at the Congress……we must remember the fundamental thing that state capitalism in the form we have here is not dealt with in any theory, or in any books…. ………We refuse to understand that when we say “state” we mean ourselves……… the vanguard of the working class.

State capitalism is capitalism which we shall be able to restrain, and the limits of which we shall be able to fix. This state capitalism is connected with the state, and the state is ……. advanced section of the workers, the vanguard. We are the state.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm