Kautsky: Bolshevik mistake of land redistribution

[Die Neue Zeit]

Looking back at the disaster of Stalin's collectivization along the lines of the artel (not even collectivizing on the lines of proper agricultural communes, much less sovkhozy) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_USSR#Implementation), I look further back at the key Bolshevik mistakes that led to that policy in the first place: land redistribution and non-rectification.

I know what pre-renegade Kautsky said about "no socialist who is to be taken seriously has ever demanded that the farmers should be exappropriated, or that their goods should be confiscated," (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1902/socrev/pt2-2.htm#s7), but there were so many landless peasants before October (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_USSR#Implementation).

(Kautsky, Social Revolution)


But it is not to be expected that all small private industries will disappear in this manner. This will be specially true in agriculture. To be sure those agricultural plants which have already become capitalist industries would fall with the wage system and be transformed into national, municipal or co-operative businesses. Therewith a large number of the little competing farmers of to-day would cease to exist and go as laborers into the industrial or agricultural great industry, because they could there secure a respectable existence. But we may be sure that some farmers would always remain with their own family, or at the most with one assistant, or maid that will be reckoned as part of the family, and would continue their little industry. With the present conservative nature of our farmers it is highly probable that a number of them would continue to work in the present manner. The proletarian governmental power would have absolutely no inclination to take over such little businesses. As yet no socialist who is to be taken seriously has ever demanded that the farmers should be exappropriated, or that their goods should be confiscated. It is much more probable that each little farmer would be permitted to work on as he has previously done. The farmer has nothing to fear from a socialist regime.

Indeed it is highly probable that these agricultural industries would receive considerable strengthening through the new regime. It would bring an abolition of militarism, of burdens of taxation, bring self-government and nationalism of schools and road taxes, an abolition of poor relief and perhaps also a lowering of mortgage burdens, and many other advantages. We have also seen that the victorious proletariat has every reason to increase the amount of products, and among those products for which the demand would be increased, the most important are agricultural products. In spite of all the refutation of the theory of increasing misery there is still much hunger to satisfy, and this fact alone justifies us in the opinion that the raising of wages mould show itself above all in an increase of the demand for agricultural products. The proletarian regime would also have the greatest interest in increasing the production of the farmers and it would have powerful forces at its disposal for this purpose. Its own interests demand that the agricultural industry should be brought to a higher stage through the care of animals, machines and fertilizers, through improvement of the soil, etc. It mould in this manner assist in Increasing agricultural products, including those in the industries not yet socialized.

But here, as well as in every sphere, conditions would make it necessary to simplify the circulation process by substituting for a large number of private individuals trading their products with one another a few organizations united for economic purposes. The State would much prefer instead of selling breeding animals, machines and fertilizers to the individual farmers to deal with the farmers’ societies and co-operatives. These societies and co-operatives would find as the purchasers of their products no longer private middle-men, but either co-operatives, unions for consumption, municipalities or national industries (mills, sugar factories, breweries and such like). So here also the private industry would continually recede before the social, and the latter would finally transform the agricultural industry itself and permit the development of many such industries through the co-operative or municipal co-operative into one great social industry. The farmers will combine their possessions and operate them in common, especially when they see how the social operation of the expropriated great industry proves that with the same expenditure of labor perceptibly more can be produced, or that with the same number of products the laborers can be granted considerably more leisure than is possible in the small industry. If the small industry is still able to assert itself in agriculture this is due not a little to the fact that it can pump more labor out of its laborers than the great industry. It is undeniable that farmers work harder than the wage workers of the great land owners. The farmer has scarcely any free time, and even during the little free time that he has he must be continually studying how he can improve his business. There is nothing else in his life but his business, and that is also one of the reasons why he is so hard for us to gain.

But this holds true only for the older generation; the younger generation is conscious of other things. They feel a strong impulse towards enjoyments and pleasures, towards joy, and also towards a higher culture, and because they cannot satisfy these impulses in the country they stream into the cities and populate the level plains. When once the farmer sees, however, that he can remain in agriculture without being compelled to renounce leisure and culture he will no longer flee from agriculture, but will simply move from the little industry to the great and therewith the last fortress of private property will disappear.

The first Bolshevik mistake was the redistribution of land over "statification." In spite of this, War Communism did provide the opportunity to rectify the mistake, but the Bolsheviks did not seize it.

There were two chances right there to "industrialize" agriculture and turn the landless peasants into proletarians right on the spot. There was the chance right there to consolidate the majority of Russian agriculture into sovkhozy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovkhoz) (where the state was the actual owner, and where the farmers worked for a wage)!

Now, in today's world and in spite of the presence of so many family farms, increased efficiencies associated with industrial agriculture and negative profits for family farms are the key to implementing global sovkhozy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming#Role_in_food_production) (US government data in PDF linked to at the end of the wiki article) for this "commanding height" of the economy (per my stamocap thread).

More: http://www.rtis.com/touchstone/oct2004/21.html (a small-l "liberal Democrat" article on the hourglass-shaped US agriculture economy)



Anti-Trotskyist rebuttal

If Lenin allegedly came about to Trotsky&#39;s ideas, why was land still redistributed? <_<

A revolutionary-democratic revolution of workers and peasants (even as opposed to Trotsky&#39;s permanent revolution of workers leaning on the peasantry - Trotskyist website (http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=519)) does NOT necessarily mean land redistribution, especially when there is the opportunity to raise living standards in the countryside while still serving a "landlord" (the "landlord" being the state). Urban workers in this alliance can go to the countryside with all the technology and teach the peasants new farming techniques with the new industrial farming technology on the new state mega-farms. The result? Increased leisure time for the peasants, while they become proletarians and decimate their own class without knowing the facts.


In so far as the dictatorship remained on the ground of democracy, Trotsky argued, it implied that the workers would be obliged to postpone socialist measures – for example the modernisation of agriculture into big farms and co-operatives. As he described it later in Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution, Lenin’s strategy could have led to a “dictatorship of the peasantry” with the workers participating.

The modernisation of agriculture into big farms and cooperatives is already a CAPITALIST measure undertaken in the developed world (also known as "economies of scale")&#33; Trotsky and (dare I say) even Lenin were wrong in saying that the modernization spoken of above was "socialist."

[Severian]

Originally posted by Hammer+April 21, 2007 12:24 pm--> (Hammer &#064; April 21, 2007 12:24 pm) Looking back at the disaster of Stalin&#39;s collectivization, I look further back at the key Bolshevik mistake that led to that policy in the first place: land redistribution. [/b]
Yeah, one led to the other - without land redistribution, the Soviet government woulda just plain been overthrown.

It&#39;s pretty weird, anyway, to claim: Stalin&#39;s policy forcibly suppressing the peasantry&#39;s desire for land coulda been avoided - if the Bolsheviks has just followed a similarly stupid policy from the beginning&#33;

Both Soviet Hungary and Soviet Lithuania avoided this "mistake" of land distribution - how long did they last? How much peasant support did they have? Not long and not much.

The Bolsheviks&#39; land distribution policy was essential for winning peasant support in the Civil War.

The Nicaraguan experience is similar: the Sandinista government often made the formation of collective farms a condition of receiving title deeds. This greatly slowed land reform and cost them a lot of peasant support. Which made it harder to win the war against the contras, which dragged on for years.

Cuba is a positive example: gradual, voluntary collectivization has been the revolutionary government&#39;s consistent policy. And yes, they distributed a fair bit of land early on. And there still are individual farmers. And support for the revolution in rural areas remains strong, and the worker-farmer alliance remains intact.


The farmers will combine their possessions and operate them in common, especially when they see how the social operation of the expropriated great industry proves that with the same expenditure of labor perceptibly more can be produced, or that with the same number of products the laborers can be granted considerably more leisure than is possible in the small industry.

Which is not original to Kautsky, in fact it goes back to Marx and Engels. It&#39;s a policy of gradual, voluntary collectivization - dependent on a situation where larger-scale collective farming is more productive than small-scale farming. This situation is not always so easy to produce, especially under conditions like early-20th-century Russia.

It&#39;s not an argument against land distribution; let alone a valid one.

It may be he did come out against land distribution elsewhere, but then Kautsky wasn&#39;t concerned with taking and holding power in a majority-peasant country. Even in his "pre-renegade" centrist phase, he was in practice content to leave power in the hands of the capitalists.

The Bolsheviks faced this as a practical problem for the first time, and found a practical solution.


Kautsky
If the small industry is still able to assert itself in agriculture this is due not a little to the fact that it can pump more labor out of its laborers than the great industry. It is undeniable that farmers work harder than the wage workers of the great land owners.

It&#39;s also undeniable that farmers work harder individually than on Soviet collective farms&#33;


The Bolshevik mistake was the redistribution of land over "statification." There was the chance right there to "industrialize" agriculture and turn the landless peasants into proletarians right on the spot. There was the chance right there to consolidate the majority of Russian agriculture into sovkhozy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovkhoz) (where the state was the actual owner, and where the farmers worked for a wage)&#33;

Would have been as disastrous economically as Stalin&#39;s rapid collectivization, besides the political problem I mentioned above.

There&#39;s a number of reasons why concentration of production proceeds much more slowly in agriculture than in manufacture. Reasons inherent to the agricultural production process itself - its dispersal over a large area, first of all.

That needs to be resolved before collective farming will become attractive. In the early Soviet context, the first requirement would have been to provide tractors to the collective farms. But that&#39;s only the first.


f Lenin came about to Trotsky&#39;s ideas, why was land still redistributed?

He didn&#39;t. (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=50710&st=25&#entry1292092433)

Trotsky and Luxemburg were shown wrong by the experience of the Revolution. Trotsky, at least, changed his perspective.


A revolutionary-democratic revolution of workers and peasants...does NOT necessarily mean land redistribution,

Gotta disagree. First of all, this revolution implies first of all concentrating on the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the revolution, i.e. smashing feudalism and landlordism. Later for socialism.

Anything else would be politically suicidal; the peasants in 1917 simply did not have conscious required to fight for socialism. They fought for land distribution, and won the Civil War for the Bolsheviks.


especially when there is the opportunity to raise living standards in the countryside while still serving a "landlord" (the "landlord" being the state). Urban workers in this alliance can go to the countryside with all the technology and teach the peasants new farming techniques with the new industrial farming technology on the new state mega-farms. The result? Increased leisure time for the peasants, while they become proletarians and decimate their own class without knowing the facts.

It&#39;s utopian to think that this will happen just because you proclaim it. "New industrial farming technology", for example, needs to be manufactured before it can be used&#33; Not so easy in 1917 Russia.

Also, the peasants needed to be taught to read first of all...unfortunately the early Soviet government never even managed that, although there were significant efforts along those lines.


The modernisation of agriculture into big farms and cooperatives is already a CAPITALIST measure undertaken in the developed world (also known as "economies of scale")&#33;

Not especially. Read the statistics you just linked: most farms and most farm production in the U.S. are still "family farms".

That&#39;s especially true when it comes to raising crops. "Factory farming" basically means big buildings full of livestock.....who are fed grain raised on family farms. You can&#39;t raise grain in little stalls on top of each other, it needs sunlight.

The problem of extensive area, and how do you supervise wage-laborers scattered across a large area, still applies there. Plus it&#39;s a risky and not so profitable area to invest capital. Among other reasons. So concentration of agriculture remains slow.

Even in technologically advanced 2007 USA, let alone 1917 Russia. Some of the problems change form under a workers&#39; government attempting to build socialism, but they remain. Finding the resources, motivating the workforce, etc.

Slogans alone do not modernize agriculture; it&#39;s an inherently slow process.

More importantly, economic construction towards socialism is not just a matter of decrees handed down from above. It&#39;s a matter of the conscious participation of those who do the labor.

So you have to consider the consciousness of the rural population, and what they will voluntarily, with creativity and initiative, participate in building. Decreeing from Moscow or Petrograd "No, you can&#39;t have any of the landlord&#39;s land", would have been an arrogant attempt to shortcut the process of building this consciousness, through political persuasion and economic aid.

One thread on some of these subjects (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?act=ST&f=6&t=35417&hl=&view=findpost&p=1291869123)

[chimx]

Originally posted by Severian+--> (Severian)Yeah, one led to the other - without land redistribution, the Soviet government woulda just plain been overthrown.[/b]

Exactly. The problem I have with Hammer&#39;s thinking is that he overemphasizes the role of the Bolshevik&#39;s political revolution in Petrograd during late October. More importantly was the social revolution that was transforming the countryside. Peasants were seizing land and it was the February governments inability to come to terms with the Peasant revolt that led to the Bolsheviks being able to take power. I suspect that early state collectivization would have led to a similar failure as it went against the social movement.


Severian
Not especially. Read the statistics you just linked: most farms and most farm production in the U.S. are still "family farms".

That&#39;s especially true when it comes to raising crops. "Factory farming" basically means big buildings full of livestock.....who are fed grain raised on family farms. You can&#39;t raise grain in little stalls on top of each other, it needs sunlight.

What&#39;s interesting is that despite the failure of Soviet collectivization is that agriculture remains has remained in a predominately collectivized model in much of the former Soviet states. Joint-stock farming companies, farming cooperatives and collective farms dominate.

As far as the US goes, I live in a more rural area, and from my talks with farmers is that a growing trend has been essentially a resurgence of a "landless peasantry" (not that we would call a farmer that). Large companies purchase land and hire farming companies to work it. These companies will often travel from farm to farm harvesting crops.

I don&#39;t know if this is becoming a norm in the rest of the United States, but I know logging is taking a similar path. Much of the logging done in the United States is done through private companies that own vast amounts of land and then hire workers to log it.

Though family farming still dominates, is it in decline (economically speaking)? While family farms are the majority, the acreage owned has tripled since the 1930s, and if you look at the actual production, large scale family farms and non-family farms do the vast majority of the production.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ What about War Communism, then?

[A missed opportunity]


It&#39;s also undeniable that farmers work harder individually than on Soviet collective farms&#33;

Yeah, emphasis on the word "collective" - kolkhozy.


Gotta disagree. First of all, this revolution implies first of all concentrating on the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the revolution, i.e. smashing feudalism and landlordism. Later for socialism.

You mistake nationalization for socialism. Did I not say this:


The modernisation of agriculture into big farms and cooperatives is already a CAPITALIST measure undertaken in the developed world (also known as "economies of scale")

[gilhyle]

Agree with Severian. I would add a comparison (contra Ken Loach&#39;s Film Land and Freedom) - the refusal of the Spanish government to enforce mass redistribution of land to small farmers was the ultimate cause of the failure of the Spanish revoltion just as the commitment to end the war and then allow the expropriateion of land by the small farmers was the key to the success of the 1917 revolution.

Where the land question remains unsolved, it is almost invariably the key to revolution in underdeveloped imperialised countries.

By the way Lenin understood clearly that the nationalisation of land was part of the democratic and not the socialist programme - check the debates on the agriculture question in the Bolshevik party before the revolution.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 10:50 pm
By the way Lenin understood clearly that the nationalisation of land was part of the democratic and not the socialist programme - check the debates on the agriculture question in the Bolshevik party before the revolution.
I know that, because I was not referring to the land at all. Like I said, the idea of bringing about industrial farming isn&#39;t socialist by itself, as seen in US farming. To call such thing "socialist" is being way off base.



If I were to interpose my thoughts between the "democratic" measures and the "socialist" measures for a moment: industrial farming belongs in the middle of these two, given its implementation in developed capitalist countries. I only expand the sphere of what Lenin meant by "democratic" measures because even nationalized industrial farming by itself isn&#39;t socialist.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

while there were gross mistakes in Soviet collectivization, to call it a "disaster" is just plain capitalist. It was the first time in human history that something so radical was put into practice: the whole world watched, and turned a needle in a haystack into a fire burning the haystack, but all in all, despite the bougeiousie&#39;s resistance, the peasants (and workers who carried out the collectivization largely) persevered, not only turning the USSR into an industrial superpower in record time, but also, abolishing private property and its exploitation of the people. What&#39;s important about Soviet collectivism is to evaluate the glorious successes, and the errors, and learn from them so that we can better put it into practice in future socialist society

[grove street]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 02:23 am
while there were gross mistakes in Soviet collectivization, to call it a "disaster" is just plain capitalist. It was the first time in human history that something so radical was put into practice: the whole world watched, and turned a needle in a haystack into a fire burning the haystack, but all in all, despite the bougeiousie&#39;s resistance, the peasants (and workers who carried out the collectivization largely) persevered, not only turning the USSR into an industrial superpower in record time, but also, abolishing private property and its exploitation of the people. What&#39;s important about Soviet collectivism is to evaluate the glorious successes, and the errors, and learn from them so that we can better put it into practice in future socialist society
If this was primary (elementary) school you would get 5 gold stars and a lollipop. Excellent.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by grove street+April 23, 2007 09:53 am--> (grove street @ April 23, 2007 09:53 am)
[email protected] 23, 2007 02:23 am
while there were gross mistakes in Soviet collectivization, to call it a "disaster" is just plain capitalist. It was the first time in human history that something so radical was put into practice: the whole world watched, and turned a needle in a haystack into a fire burning the haystack, but all in all, despite the bougeiousie&#39;s resistance, the peasants (and workers who carried out the collectivization largely) persevered, not only turning the USSR into an industrial superpower in record time, but also, abolishing private property and its exploitation of the people. What&#39;s important about Soviet collectivism is to evaluate the glorious successes, and the errors, and learn from them so that we can better put it into practice in future socialist society
If this was primary (elementary) school you would get 5 gold stars and a lollipop. Excellent. [/b]
erm care to critiscize it instead of being a useless prick?

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by LeftyHenry+April 23, 2007 10:42 pm--> (LeftyHenry @ April 23, 2007 10:42 pm)
Originally posted by grove [email protected] 23, 2007 09:53 am

[email protected] 23, 2007 02:23 am
while there were gross mistakes in Soviet collectivization, to call it a "disaster" is just plain capitalist. It was the first time in human history that something so radical was put into practice: the whole world watched, and turned a needle in a haystack into a fire burning the haystack, but all in all, despite the bougeiousie&#39;s resistance, the peasants (and workers who carried out the collectivization largely) persevered, not only turning the USSR into an industrial superpower in record time, but also, abolishing private property and its exploitation of the people. What&#39;s important about Soviet collectivism is to evaluate the glorious successes, and the errors, and learn from them so that we can better put it into practice in future socialist society
If this was primary (elementary) school you would get 5 gold stars and a lollipop. Excellent.
erm care to critiscize it instead of being a useless prick? [/b]
History judges your view....destroying the international communist movement, destroying the old bolshevik cadre, terrorising the Russian peasantry through forced collectivisation, building slave labour systems....yeah it worked really well : end result .....we&#39;re all typin&#39; away on an obscure website cos revolutionanry politics is marginalised and the whole labour movement is in retreat and dissarray.....ultimate cause: the failure that was the USSR as designed by the Glorious Joe. Soviet industrialisation was certainly worth it.

[grove street]

Originally posted by LeftyHenry+April 23, 2007 10:42 pm--> (LeftyHenry @ April 23, 2007 10:42 pm)
Originally posted by grove [email protected] 23, 2007 09:53 am

[email protected] 23, 2007 02:23 am
while there were gross mistakes in Soviet collectivization, to call it a "disaster" is just plain capitalist. It was the first time in human history that something so radical was put into practice: the whole world watched, and turned a needle in a haystack into a fire burning the haystack, but all in all, despite the bougeiousie&#39;s resistance, the peasants (and workers who carried out the collectivization largely) persevered, not only turning the USSR into an industrial superpower in record time, but also, abolishing private property and its exploitation of the people. What&#39;s important about Soviet collectivism is to evaluate the glorious successes, and the errors, and learn from them so that we can better put it into practice in future socialist society
If this was primary (elementary) school you would get 5 gold stars and a lollipop. Excellent.
erm care to critiscize it instead of being a useless prick? [/b]
If you haven&#39;t noticed I&#39;m complementing your explanation/observation about the topic of collectivism in the USSR.

I would like to write down my own explanation/observation defending Stalin&#39;s collectivism, but you have already summed what I was going to say in a far better way and if I was going to put down my opinion it would just be a repeat of what you have just said, but in a poorer format.

Be happy. :D

[grove street]

Originally posted by gilhyle+April 23, 2007 10:55 pm--> (gilhyle @ April 23, 2007 10:55 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 10:42 pm

Originally posted by grove [email protected] 23, 2007 09:53 am

[email protected] 23, 2007 02:23 am
while there were gross mistakes in Soviet collectivization, to call it a "disaster" is just plain capitalist. It was the first time in human history that something so radical was put into practice: the whole world watched, and turned a needle in a haystack into a fire burning the haystack, but all in all, despite the bougeiousie&#39;s resistance, the peasants (and workers who carried out the collectivization largely) persevered, not only turning the USSR into an industrial superpower in record time, but also, abolishing private property and its exploitation of the people. What&#39;s important about Soviet collectivism is to evaluate the glorious successes, and the errors, and learn from them so that we can better put it into practice in future socialist society
If this was primary (elementary) school you would get 5 gold stars and a lollipop. Excellent.
erm care to critiscize it instead of being a useless prick?
History judges your view....destroying the international communist movement, destroying the old bolshevik cadre, terrorising the Russian peasantry through forced collectivisation, building slave labour systems....yeah it worked really well : end result .....we&#39;re all typin&#39; away on an obscure website cos revolutionanry politics is marginalised and the whole labour movement is in retreat and dissarray.....ultimate cause: the failure that was the USSR as designed by the Glorious Joe. Soviet industrialisation was certainly worth it. [/b]
Yes lets just blame the failure of the USSR on Stalin and completly over-look the revisonism following his death.

Without Stalin&#39;s industrilization, no matter how brutal you might think it was, the fact remains that it was nesscarry and without it the USSR and Europe would of fell to the Nazis.

&#39;&#39;Russia can&#39;t afford to be backwards&#39;&#39;- Stalin

&#39;&#39;We are 100-150 years behind the most advanced nations, if we can&#39;t close the gap within the space of ten years we will be crushed&#39;&#39;- Stalin

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by grove street+April 24, 2007 02:19 am--> (grove street @ April 24, 2007 02:19 am)
Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 10:42 pm

Originally posted by grove [email protected] 23, 2007 09:53 am

[email protected] 23, 2007 02:23 am
while there were gross mistakes in Soviet collectivization, to call it a "disaster" is just plain capitalist. It was the first time in human history that something so radical was put into practice: the whole world watched, and turned a needle in a haystack into a fire burning the haystack, but all in all, despite the bougeiousie&#39;s resistance, the peasants (and workers who carried out the collectivization largely) persevered, not only turning the USSR into an industrial superpower in record time, but also, abolishing private property and its exploitation of the people. What&#39;s important about Soviet collectivism is to evaluate the glorious successes, and the errors, and learn from them so that we can better put it into practice in future socialist society
If this was primary (elementary) school you would get 5 gold stars and a lollipop. Excellent.
erm care to critiscize it instead of being a useless prick?
If you haven&#39;t noticed I&#39;m complementing your explanation/observation about the topic of collectivism in the USSR.

I would like to write down my own explanation/observation defending Stalin&#39;s collectivism, but you have already summed what I was going to say in a far better way and if I was going to put down my opinion it would just be a repeat of what you have just said, but in a poorer format.

Be happy. :D [/b]
oooooooooooooohhhhhhh :lol: I thought you were calling me a preschooler lol

[Rawthentic]

Without Stalin&#39;s industrilization, no matter how brutal you might think it was, the fact remains that it was nesscarry and without it the USSR and Europe would of fell to the Nazis.
Okay, at least we can accept that it was brutal to those who actually worked to industrialize the nation and those who died (Stalingrad mainly) to defend "Mother Russia."

[gilhyle]

Stalin was the midwife of the defeat of the Russian Revolution. He was the parent of the &#39;revisionists&#39; who followed him.

Stalin had one good feature: he judged people not by what they intended, but by the objective consequences of their actions.

By his own standards, he was a capitalist roader, leading the USSR towards the restoration of capitalism....and forced collectivization was the critical error after which the restoration of capitalism was inevitable. Capitalist restoration was the objective consequence of forced collectivization.

Assuming the rumours that Stalin was a police spy in the 1900s are flase or at least assuming that he was a convinced revolutionary (and sometimes police spies are also convinced revolutionaries), he was a failure by his own lights. The Mao route to capitalist restoration and the Brezhnev route are much of a muchness in the scheme of things.

Yes I blame him, but not morally, not personally, I blame him politically because he did not understand his own chosen political stance.

He and Kruschev and Brezhnev and Andropov and Gorbachev were all of a type, all of kind, with one political perspective - &#39;realpolitik&#39;, as Lukacs called it - and it led them all to the restoration of capitalism because they did not believe in vigorosoly pursuing international revolution; they believed in the defence of &#39;really existing socialism&#39; at any price. That belief justified forced collectivization, that belief is embodied in your speculative (unprovable) claim about the outcome of WW2.

The defence of really existing socialism as a goal leads to the restoration of capitalism - what does not go forward goes backwards. History has judged. Stalinism fails.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 07:40 am

especially when there is the opportunity to raise living standards in the countryside while still serving a "landlord" (the "landlord" being the state). Urban workers in this alliance can go to the countryside with all the technology and teach the peasants new farming techniques with the new industrial farming technology on the new state mega-farms. The result? Increased leisure time for the peasants, while they become proletarians and decimate their own class without knowing the facts.

It&#39;s utopian to think that this will happen just because you proclaim it. "New industrial farming technology", for example, needs to be manufactured before it can be used&#33; Not so easy in 1917 Russia.

Also, the peasants needed to be taught to read first of all...unfortunately the early Soviet government never even managed that, although there were significant efforts along those lines.
Back on topic, if the redistribution was indeed unstoppable (vs. peasant expropriation), I gotta ask two questions:

1) Did peasants THROUGHOUT the country move in to take land from the landlords, or were some more passive than others (even when the landlords vacated)? If there were some, the sliver of opportunity for sovkhozy may not have been maximized.

EDIT: Left-communist Hopscotch posted this:


However, when the Bolsheviks came to power he made a severe error in his support of land redistribution and the right of nations to self-determination. Without such policies the peasants, bitter perhaps at the loss of a chance to take the landlord’s old property, would nonetheless be organized into agricultural collectives operating with socialized means of production. Instead land was redistributed creating a sect of individualists opposed to socialization of agricultural production and the power of landlords was reinforced. It would take the iron fist of Stalin to undo the damage but Stalin’s rule, of course, was the rule of a state-bourgeoisie and not a party of the working class.

2) With regards to literacy, what percentage of the peasantry was illiterate?

3) Oh, and theoretically speaking, nobody has addressed my revolutionary-democratic "interpose" remarks yet. Related to these remarks is the route for modern Russia&#39;s agriculture, as someone said above in regards to joint-stock companies operating farms. How big is family farming in Russia? In regards to the cooperatives, can a socialist revolution in the near future actually expose the diseconomies of scale resulting from privatization, shred the remnants of kolkhozy, and finish the sovkhozy "revolution" started by Khrushchev, given the increased literacy levels and general passivity of the rural Russian populace?

[grove street]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 09:21 pm
Stalin was the midwife of the defeat of the Russian Revolution. He was the parent of the &#39;revisionists&#39; who followed him.

Stalin had one good feature: he judged people not by what they intended, but by the objective consequences of their actions.

By his own standards, he was a capitalist roader, leading the USSR towards the restoration of capitalism....and forced collectivization was the critical error after which the restoration of capitalism was inevitable. Capitalist restoration was the objective consequence of forced collectivization.

Assuming the rumours that Stalin was a police spy in the 1900s are flase or at least assuming that he was a convinced revolutionary (and sometimes police spies are also convinced revolutionaries), he was a failure by his own lights. The Mao route to capitalist restoration and the Brezhnev route are much of a muchness in the scheme of things.

Yes I blame him, but not morally, not personally, I blame him politically because he did not understand his own chosen political stance.

He and Kruschev and Brezhnev and Andropov and Gorbachev were all of a type, all of kind, with one political perspective - &#39;realpolitik&#39;, as Lukacs called it - and it led them all to the restoration of capitalism because they did not believe in vigorosoly pursuing international revolution; they believed in the defence of &#39;really existing socialism&#39; at any price. That belief justified forced collectivization, that belief is embodied in your speculative (unprovable) claim about the outcome of WW2.

The defence of really existing socialism as a goal leads to the restoration of capitalism - what does not go forward goes backwards. History has judged. Stalinism fails.
If it wasn&#39;t for Stalin the USSR would of collapsed following the Nazi invasion.

I honestly can&#39;t see in how moving foward from Lenin&#39;s mixed economy to fullscale collectivism makes Stalin a capitalist roadster.

If catching up by 200 years within the space of 10 years does not show the world that collectivism is better then Capatalism then I don&#39;t know what does.

The USSR&#39;s economy grew the most under Stalin, from Krushchev on it was a down hill slide leading to it&#39;s eventual collapse.

This shows that collectivism is good while revisionism is bad.

[Lamanov]

Hammer, since this is a historical analysis, you avoided the main Severian&#39;s argument: how do you suppose the Bolsheviks could have retained state power unless they supported "Land to the peasants"?

They assumed power through the 2nd Soviet congress precisely because of the votes of peasants who wanted to take the land reform all the way.

Weather you agree with the Bolsheviks or not, this remains a recognized fact.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by grove [email protected] 25, 2007 08:54 am

I honestly can&#39;t see in how moving foward from Lenin&#39;s mixed economy to fullscale collectivism makes Stalin a capitalist roadster.


Simply because to achieve and sustain FORCED collectivization and the form of bureaucratically planned economy that it required he had to shoot the party, terrorise the country and install in power a layer of bureaucrats who (as events proved in both the USSR and China) had an objective interest in restoring capitalism. To control those bureaucrats he, like Mao, relied on terror and bribery. These are unsustainable policies; they reduce government to a personal dictatorship and they end when the personal dictatorship ends. Consequently, they can only lead in one direction when applied in a socialist country within a capitalist world : Capitalism.

By Stalin&#39;s own political logic a capitalist restorationist is one whose actions imply an objective logic of moving towards capitalist restoration - irrespective of the intentions of the agent. Stalin created the conditions for the restoration of capitalism and he destroyed the social forces that could stop it. That makes Stalin a restorationist.

[Sorry Hammer, I&#39;m diverting your thread from its topic, on which I think DJ-TC is correct: you have not addressed Severian&#39;s point.]

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;[email protected] 25, 2007 10:54 am
Hammer, since this is a historical analysis, you avoided Severian&#39;s main argument: how do you suppose the Bolsheviks could have retained state power unless they supported "Land to the peasants"?

They assumed power through the 2nd Soviet congress precisely because of the votes of peasants who wanted to take the land reform all the way.

Weather you agree with the Bolsheviks or not, this remains a recognized fact.

I recognize that fact quite well, but did every single peasant vote in the country vote for Bolshevik delegates to the 2nd Congress of Soviets? [Consider the Left SRs.]

Remember: given the illiteracy of vast elements of the peasantry (which Severian himself mentioned), it&#39;s not as if everyone of them could express an explicit desire to actually OWN the land. The passivity of at least some of them (NOT unlike today&#39;s Russia rife with positive sentiment towards Putin, mind you) would have provided the opportunity for sovkhozization, because at least some of them could have been content enough to see the landlords kicked out.

Even in today&#39;s society, the majority of people care only about superstructural issues. The absence of landlords is one such issue; the ownership issue may not have been properly understood by them. The relief of seeing the landlords gone would have been moreso under War Communism, which nobody has yet addressed.

As for the tractor question, Severian might have a good point there, but what about the subsequent economic cooperation with the Weimar Republic?



Oh, and theoretically speaking, nobody has addressed my revolutionary-democratic "interpose" remarks yet. Related to these remarks is the route for modern Russia&#39;s agriculture, as someone said above in regards to joint-stock companies operating farms. How big is family farming in Russia? In regards to the cooperatives, can a socialist revolution in the near future actually expose the diseconomies of scale resulting from privatization, shred the remnants of kolkhozy, and finish the sovkhozy "revolution" started by Khrushchev, given the increased literacy levels and general passivity of the rural Russian populace?

[gilhyle]

Your concept of the passivity of the peasants may be at the heart of your question. Its very wide of the mark. The peasantry in Russia - as everywhere - have very clear conceptions of the desirability of land ownership. there were, by the way attempts in 1918 to start collective farms which failed completely.

Your interpose point was that the kind of revolution that happened in Russia doesnt NECESARILY involve land redistribution - granted but in this case it was unavaoidable.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26, 2007 10:47 pm
There were, by the way attempts in 1918 to start collective farms which failed completely.

Your interpose point was that the kind of revolution that happened in Russia doesnt NECESARILY involve land redistribution - granted but in this case it was unavaoidable.
^^^ Sorry for the overly late reply ( :( ), but do you mean collective farms proper, or state farms? You might want to read this (if you have full access):

"Before the Bolsheviks came into power, Lenin envisaged the necessity of organizing large state farms." (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-3195(193803)53&#37;3A1%3C60%3ASSFI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y)

And this:

Lenin: Measures for Improving the Organisation of State Farms (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/mar/09.htm)

[Leo]

I think that on the peasantry in Russia, we should look at what Marx and Engels said also. In 1881, Marx says in First Draft of Letter To Vera Zasulich: "To save the Russian commune, a Russian revolution is needed (...) If revolution comes at the opportune moment, if it concentrates all its forces so as to allow the rural commune full scope, the latter will soon develop as an element of regeneration in Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist system."
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...3/zasulich1.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm) )

In the 1882 Preface to the Russian language version of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels say that: "The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development."
(http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1848/co...tm#preface-1882 (http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1882) )

This actually puts forward what was necessary: in rural areas, "agricultural communes" (as Marx calls them) working together with the revolutionary proletariat of Russia and of the West.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 05, 2007 07:38 pm
I think that on the peasantry in Russia, we should look at what Marx and Engels said also. In 1881, Marx says in First Draft of Letter To Vera Zasulich: "To save the Russian commune, a Russian revolution is needed (...) If revolution comes at the opportune moment, if it concentrates all its forces so as to allow the rural commune full scope, the latter will soon develop as an element of regeneration in Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist system."
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...3/zasulich1.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm) )

In the 1882 Preface to the Russian language version of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels say that: "The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development."
(http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1848/co...tm#preface-1882 (http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1882) )

This actually puts forward what was necessary: in rural areas, "agricultural communes" (as Marx calls them) working together with the revolutionary proletariat of Russia and of the West.
^^^ At least those quotes put to rest the bourgeois-historian notion of "Marx thought that Russia wasn&#39;t ripe for any form of revolution."

But what are "agricultural communes"? Collective non-state farms? Precursors of the modern kibbutz? Did Marx describe such as big or small, given the disasters of Stalin&#39;s and Mao&#39;s collectivization policies (as opposed to sovkhozy)?

[Leo]

No, Marx describes them as pre-capitalist agricultural relations...

From the same letter:

"To assess the possible outcomes from a purely theoretical point of view, that is to say, assuming normal conditions of life, I must now point out certain characteristic features which distinguish the “agricultural commune” from the more archaic types.

Firstly, previous primitive communities are all based on the natural kinship of their members; by breaking this strong but tight bond, the agricultural commune is better able to spread and to withstand contact with strangers.

Next, in this form the house and its complement, the courtyard, are already the private property of the cultivator, whereas long before the introduction of agriculture the communal house was one of the material bases of previous communities.

Finally, although arable land remains communal property, it is divided periodically between the members of the agricultural commune, so that each cultivator tills the fields assigned to him on his own account and appropriates as an individual the fruits thereof, whereas in more archaic communities production took place communally and only the yield was shared out. This primitive type of cooperative or collective production resulted, of course, from the weakness of the isolated individual, and not from the socialisation of the means of production. It is easy to see that the dualism inherent in the “agricultural commune” might endow it with a vigorous life, since on the one hand communal property and all the social relations springing from it make for its solid foundation, whereas the private house, the cultivation of arable land in parcels and the private appropriation of its fruits permit a development of individuality which is incompatible with conditions in more primitive communities.

But it is no less evident that this very dualism might in time become a source of decay. Apart from all the influences of hostile surroundings, the mere gradual accumulation of chattels which begins with wealth in the form of cattle (even admitting wealth in the form of serfs), the increasingly pronounced role which the movable element plays in agriculture itself, and a host of other circumstances inseparable from this accumulation but which it would take me too long to go into here, will eat away at economic and social equality and give rise to a conflict of interests at the very heart of the commune, entailing first the conversion of arable land into private property and ending with the private appropriation of the forests, pastures, common lands, etc., which have already become communal appendages of private property.

This is why the “agricultural commune” occurs everywhere as the most recent type of the archaic form of societies, and why in the historical development of Western Europe, ancient and modern, the period of the agricultural commune appears as a period of transition from communal property to private property, as a period of transition from the primary form to the secondary one. But does this mean that in all circumstances the development of the “agricultural commune” must follow this path? Not at all. Its constitutive form allows this alternative: either the element of private property which it implies will gain the upper hand over the collective element, or the latter will gain the upper hand over the former. Both these solutions are a priori possible, but for either one to prevail over the other it is obvious that quite different historical surroundings are needed. All this depends on the historical surroundings in which it finds itself.

Russia is the sole European country where the “agricultural commune” has kept going on a nationwide scale up to the present day. It is not the prey of a foreign conqueror, as the East Indies, and neither does it lead a life cut off from the modern world. On the one hand, the common ownership of land allows it to transform individualist farming in parcels directly and gradually into collective farming, and the Russian peasants are already practising it in the undivided grasslands; the physical lie of the land invites mechanical cultivation on a large scale; the peasant’s familiarity with the contract of artel facilitates the transition from parcel labour to cooperative labour; and, finally, Russian society, which has so long lived at his expense, owes him the necessary advances for such a transition. On the other hand, the contemporaneity of western production, which dominates the world market, allows Russia to incorporate in the commune all the positive acquisitions devised by the capitalist system without passing through its Caudine Forks [i.e., undergo humiliation in defeat]."

So in short, Marx is advocating that those pre-capitalist agricultural communes will skip the "capitalization of agriculture" process in favor of an advanced communal mode of production if it has close relationships with the communist industrial workers of Russia and the West.

Thus it has nothing to do with Stalin and Mao&#39;s "collectivization" processes as those were exactly "capitalization of agriculture" in reality. In fact Bordiga has a very detailed analysis of the capitalist relations in collectivized farms, although this work of his is only in Italian and is not translated.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ So where do Lenin&#39;s redistribution, Kautsky&#39;s remarks, and my contention come in? :huh:

[Leo]

In that it answers the question regarding what should have been done with the Russian peasantry.

For capitalism, ideally, the majority agricultural sector is proletarianized and the minority joins the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie. Russia was a specific case.

What you say here:


Trotsky and (dare I say) even Lenin were wrong in saying that the modernization spoken of above was "socialist."

is indeed true. What the Bolsheviks did in this regards, war communism and even NEP, was to sacrifice the solution of the economical problem in order to solve various political problems. Unfortunately it failed; NEP was in fact a necessary step for the capitalization of agriculture in Russia.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Most of the rebuttals here to my economic question reflect that (politics).

Next question: was Stalin&#39;s particularly grave error in pursuing collectivization the one of his preference of the kolkhozy over the sovkhozy? Granted, the whole reason for collectivization in the first place was to accumulate sufficient capital to pursue the industrialization drive, which was woefully non-existent under either NEP or War Communism.

And what about the increasing presence of sovkhozy in the later Soviet periods?

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 05:59 pm
was Stalin&#39;s particularly grave error in ending NEP the one of his preference of the kolkhozy over the sovkhozy?
Is there a typo in this ?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by gilhyle+May 06, 2007 06:05 pm--> (gilhyle @ May 06, 2007 06:05 pm)
[email protected] 06, 2007 05:59 pm
was Stalin&#39;s particularly grave error in ending NEP the one of his preference of the kolkhozy over the sovkhozy?
Is there a typo in this ? [/b]
^^^ Thanks. I edited that. :)

[syndicat]

imposing state farms is what, in large part, Stalin&#39;s first five-year plan in 1929 did. it merely creates a class of managers and experts (agronomists etc) over the farm workers.

in 1917 80% of the population were peasants. they were largely engaged in subsistence farming. productivity was low. in Russia proper education was low -- half of Russian peasants were illiterate. (In Ukraine there was a higher educational level -- only 25% were illiterate.)

what the peasants wanted and were willing to fight for had a great impact on the dynamics of the revolution. a reason for the collapse of the old order is that the peasants had always viewed the ownership of the land by the gentry as illegitimate. the "emancipation" of the serfs in 1861 had endebted the peasant village communes (mir) to pay off the gentry for the land conveyed to the commune. this was regarded as illegitimate by the peasants. the Russian peasantry adhered to a feudal ideology that says that private land ownership is illegitimate, "God owns the land". Sheila Jackson discusses this in "The Russian Revolution." this was why the peasantry was revolutionary in 1917.

it&#39;s a mistake to view "land distribution" as something like handing out private ownership titles to a western European style market-oriented peasant farmer. the land in Russia was controlled by the mir. the mir allocated land to peasant households on the basis of how many mouths they had to feed. in a letter to Vera Zasulich in the 1880s Marx had said that he thought the mir could be the basis for a socialist transition in Russia. moreover it wasn&#39;t a question of the government "redistributing" land. the peasants simply seized it.

because of the huge mass of peasants, and the fact that the Left SRs were the main political tendency at the meeting of the Peasant Congress in Nov 1917, the Bolsheviks were forced into a coalition government with the Left SRs til the spring of 1918.

G.P. Maximov, a syndicalist who was an agronomist, had suggested that the way to move the peasants towards higher productivity and a more collective consciousness would be to exchange tractors and rural electrication equipment for their produce. they&#39;d have to own the tractors and rural electrification systems in common, so each peasant household would be less on its own.

but in the cirscumstances of the civil war this sort of policy could not be pursued because Russia&#39;s manufacturing capacity was dedicated to keeping the Red Army in the field.

Stalin&#39;s approach was the more authoritarian one of a forced march, expropriating the peasants and investing in ag equipment (tractors etc), with operations run by state management, to increase producitivity in agriculture, and state ownership meant that efficiency gains could be captured by the dominating class for investment in industry, especially heavy industry to maintain a large military machine, and peasants could be forced off the land to work in industry.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 06:13 pm
imposing state farms is what, in large part, Stalin&#39;s first five-year plan in 1929 did. it merely creates a class of managers and experts (agronomists etc) over the farm workers.

Sorry for the long delay, but that&#39;s simply not true. By far, most of the farms resulting from the collectivization drive were kolkhozy. How would you have managers and agronomists in such an environment. If anything else, the trigger point for the emergence of that "class" was the Virgin Lands Campaign.

And nobody here has yet to comment on the sovkhozy. :(


what the peasants wanted and were willing to fight for had a great impact on the dynamics of the revolution. a reason for the collapse of the old order is that the peasants had always viewed the ownership of the land by the gentry as illegitimate. the "emancipation" of the serfs in 1861 had endebted the peasant village communes (mir) to pay off the gentry for the land conveyed to the commune. this was regarded as illegitimate by the peasants. the Russian peasantry adhered to a feudal ideology that says that private land ownership is illegitimate, "God owns the land". Sheila Jackson discusses this in "The Russian Revolution." this was why the peasantry was revolutionary in 1917.

it&#39;s a mistake to view "land distribution" as something like handing out private ownership titles to a western European style market-oriented peasant farmer. the land in Russia was controlled by the mir. the mir allocated land to peasant households on the basis of how many mouths they had to feed. in a letter to Vera Zasulich in the 1880s Marx had said that he thought the mir could be the basis for a socialist transition in Russia. moreover it wasn&#39;t a question of the government "redistributing" land. the peasants simply seized it.

The letter was cited in explicit detail above. ;)


Stalin&#39;s approach was the more authoritarian one of a forced march, expropriating the peasants and investing in ag equipment (tractors etc), with operations run by state management, to increase producitivity in agriculture, and state ownership meant that efficiency gains could be captured by the dominating class for investment in industry, especially heavy industry to maintain a large military machine, and peasants could be forced off the land to work in industry.

Isn&#39;t that all about primitive accumulation?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25, 2007 06:50 pm
Remember: given the illiteracy of vast elements of the peasantry (which Severian himself mentioned), it&#39;s not as if everyone of them could express an explicit desire to actually OWN the land. The passivity of at least some of them (NOT unlike today&#39;s Russia rife with positive sentiment towards Putin, mind you) would have provided the opportunity for sovkhozization, because at least some of them could have been content enough to see the landlords kicked out.
This is the only place where Hammer makes any effort to really address my points....

It&#39;s remarkable how bureaucratic his approach his here. He relies on the passivity and illiteracy of the peasantry to avoid giving them what they want. He hopes they&#39;ll be content with less.

But in a revolution, you can&#39;t just rely on the oppressed and exploited remaining passive and out of politics. (This is unlikely to happen anyway; a deepgoing revolution rouses all kinds of people who were previously too ground down to dare think or act politically.)

In a revolution, it&#39;s necessary to rouse the exploited as conscious makers of their own destiny. And not just the working class: the working class leads other working people but that necessarily implies other layers of working people are also active participants.

Active, conscious revolutionary mobilization of the peasants was necessary not only to winning the Civil War. This had to be sustained if there was going to be a socialist transformation of economic relations in the countryside - worthy of that name, socialist.

As it happens, there wasn&#39;t; the revolution was crushed in Western Europe, and then in Russia. Instead of a socialist transformation of the countryside by revolutionary-political means, there was a bureaucratic-military forced collectivization. The rest is history.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 01:41 am
This is the only place where Hammer makes any effort to really address my points....

It&#39;s remarkable how bureaucratic his approach his here. He relies on the passivity and illiteracy of the peasantry to avoid giving them what they want. He hopes they&#39;ll be content with less.
How can my approach be "bureaucratic"? Like Leo said above, it&#39;s primarily addressing the underlying economic factors, particularly that of economies of scale. Interestingly enough, today&#39;s Russian farmers have learned this lesson by maintaining large-scale farming.

In the long run, it is also what they want: less toil, more buck (all the while resulting in increased productivity). That does NOT happen under land re-distributions. We&#39;re seeing this same problem elsewhere, like in Venezuela.


But in a revolution, you can&#39;t just rely on the oppressed and exploited remaining passive and out of politics. (This is unlikely to happen anyway; a deepgoing revolution rouses all kinds of people who were previously too ground down to dare think or act politically.)

Granted, but that&#39;s the political aspect of revolution. Even then, as active as they will be in such a situation, it isn&#39;t as if they&#39;ll turn "professional" overnight.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Hammer+May 13, 2007 07:55 pm--> (Hammer @ May 13, 2007 07:55 pm)
[email protected] 14, 2007 01:41 am
This is the only place where Hammer makes any effort to really address my points....

It&#39;s remarkable how bureaucratic his approach his here. He relies on the passivity and illiteracy of the peasantry to avoid giving them what they want. He hopes they&#39;ll be content with less.
How can my approach be "bureaucratic"? [/b]
I explained how. Once again, you chose not to deal with it.

[syndicat]

I wasn&#39;t sure what the exact proportions were between the "collective farms" and state farms. Stalin&#39;s program was aimed at ratcheting up the exploitation of the peasantry. I don&#39;t think this is essential to my point, tho.

The re-org of agriculture generated huge opposition. The use of collective farms makes sense due to both this opposition and the fact that at the time of the first five-year plan the coordinator class regime lacked sufficient cadres for management. This was partly addressed thru the "proletarianization" campaign, a crash program to put huge numbers of party members, drawn especially from the army, thru univerities to crank out more engineers and managers.

Traditional peasant subsistence agriculture in Russia had very low productivity. So Stalin&#39;s plan for increased agricultural productivity was carried out partly by new investment in things like tractors but also by a speed up. The increased productivity could free up large numbers of peasants, driven off the land to work in factories. The rate of exploitation for collective farms would be controlled by what the collective got from the monopoly state for its products. so it was sort of equivalent to the putting out system in early capitalism.

i wouldn&#39;t call it "primitive accumulation" because there were no private owners of wealth to accumulate it but the products of labor weren&#39;t appropriated by the people producing them. the coordinator class was increasing the allocation of production to investment, especially in heavy industry. it was equivalent to primitive accumulation in that the peasantry were being forced off the land into factories, their level of exploitation was increased, in order to increase the rate of investment in new forces of production...and forces of destruction (the armed forces).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 08:30 pm
I wasn&#39;t sure what the exact proportions were between the "collective farms" and state farms.
^^^ The wiki link on the sovkhoz above gives a good idea. Sufficed to say that, even towards the tail end under Gorbachev, proper state farms accounted for only 45% of the total number of Soviet farms.


Stalin&#39;s program was aimed at ratcheting up the exploitation of the peasantry. I don&#39;t think this is essential to my point, tho.

I can definitely agree with you there. I&#39;ll assume that, for the rest of your post, "collective" means both kolkhozy and sovkhozy.


The re-org of agriculture generated huge opposition. The use of collective farms makes sense due to both this opposition and the fact that at the time of the first five-year plan the coordinator class regime lacked sufficient cadres for management.

That&#39;s true; no argument from me.


This was partly addressed thru the "proletarianization" campaign, a crash program to put huge numbers of party members, drawn especially from the army, thru univerities to crank out more engineers and managers.

A matter of semantics, but definitely the wrong word was used. A better term: managerial revolution. Proletarianization actually means turning peasants into rural wage-labourers. Again, refer to Khrushchev&#39;s sovkhozization.


Traditional peasant subsistence agriculture in Russia had very low productivity.

Neither of us have addressed sufficiently Leo&#39;s "agricultural commune" comments, at least in this thread. Fortunately, I&#39;ve got a dedicated thread on this in the Theory forum (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=66384). :)

As "bureaucratic" (per Severian <_< ) as my approach MAY be, land redistribution definitely did NOT result in increased productivity. That&#39;s the production problem in Venezuela right now (albeit secondary to the distribution choke-points).


So Stalin&#39;s plan for increased agricultural productivity was carried out partly by new investment in things like tractors but also by a speed up. The increased productivity could free up large numbers of peasants, driven off the land to work in factories.

Except that productivity decreased, though. :huh:

Either way, the early Soviet state faced an accumulation and industrialization dilemma: NEP was NOT the answer to the forthcoming Nazi onslaught.

[syndicat]

me: "This was partly addressed thru the "proletarianization" campaign, a crash program to put huge numbers of party members, drawn especially from the army, thru univerities to crank out more engineers and managers."



A matter of semantics, but definitely the wrong word was used. A better term: managerial revolution. Proletarianization actually means turning peasants into rural wage-labourers. Again, refer to Khrushchev&#39;s sovkhozization.

I put "proletarianization" in quotes because, as you point out, it was really an entrenchment of the corporate-style hierarchy of managers and engineers. The term "proletarianization" was used because the cadres put thru the training program were of proletarian or ex-peasant origin. It was a kind of "upward mobility" program. Those ambitious members of the working class who identified with the new system and the regime were advanced into higher paying and more powerful positions. Wage differentials were greatly increased.

I suppose that productivity in agriculture may have fallen immediately due to huge peasant opposition and resistance. but forcing people off the land into factories may have increased the country&#39;s overall productivity. Also, women were brought into industry in very large numbers as well.

Certainly it is true that throughout the &#39;30s Russia&#39;s overall GDP growth was very high.

Lowering wages of course is another way for the ruling elite to do this. In the first five-year plan the working class standard of living fell.

[syndicat]

me: "Lowering wages of course is another way for the ruling elite to do this. In the first five-year plan the working class standard of living fell."

What i mean by this is that lowering working class living standards is a way to shift resources to investment rather than current consumption.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ To be fair, though, Russia at that time did NOT have the material conditions to be a consumer&#39;s state of ANY sorts (the emphasis on the consumer is the problem that I have with your parecon stuff, although at least you are to reformist Michael Albert what Marx was to the "spiritual" Hegel).


Originally posted by Severian
Yeah, one led to the other - without land redistribution, the Soviet government woulda just plain been overthrown.

It&#39;s pretty weird, anyway, to claim: Stalin&#39;s policy forcibly suppressing the peasantry&#39;s desire for land coulda been avoided - if the Bolsheviks has just followed a similarly stupid policy from the beginning&#33;

To reiterate, I quote a recent post by a left-communist (Hopscotch) on the subject of land redistribution, which addresses Severian&#39;s purely POLITICAL concerns:


However, when the Bolsheviks came to power he made a severe error in his support of land redistribution and the right of nations to self-determination. Without such policies the peasants, bitter perhaps at the loss of a chance to take the landlord’s old property, would nonetheless be organized into agricultural collectives operating with socialized means of production. Instead land was redistributed creating a sect of individualists opposed to socialization of agricultural production and the power of landlords was reinforced. It would take the iron fist of Stalin to undo the damage but Stalin’s rule, of course, was the rule of a state-bourgeoisie and not a party of the working class.



As for today? Here&#39;s some questionable developments:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/17/ame...17venezuela.php (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/17/america/17venezuela.php)


For centuries, much of Venezuela&#39;s rich farmland has been in the hands of a small elite. After coming to power in 1998, and especially after his re-election in December, President Hugo Chávez vowed to end that inequality, and has been keeping his promise in a process that is both brutal and legal.

Chávez is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela&#39;s history, building utopian farming villages for squatters, lavishing money on new cooperatives and sending army commando units to supervise seized estates in six states.

...

Bella Vista is one of 12 "communal towns" that Chávez plans to build this year. It has neat rows of identical three-bedroom homes for 83 families, a reading room, a radio station, a building with free high-speed Internet service, a school and a plaza with a bust of Simón Bolívar, Venezuela&#39;s national hero.

...

But while some of the newly settled farming communities are euphoric, landowners are jittery. Economists say the land reform may have the opposite effect of what Chavez intends, and make the country more dependent on imported food than before.

The uncertainties and disruptions of the land seizures have led to lower investment by some farmers. Production of some foods has been relatively flat, adding to shortages of items like sugar, economists say.

...

Top-down land redistribution projects have a troubled history in Latin America, including Venezuela itself, which last tried it in the 1960s. Even neighboring countries like Brazil, with a flourishing agribusiness industry, still struggle with militant demands for land from the rural poor.

But Venezuela, unlike many of its neighbors, has long imported most of its food, and uses less than 30 percent of its arable land to its full potential, according to the United Nations.

That last part, while acknowledging the existence of private businesses operating Brasilian farms (not my preference, of course), also implies industrial farming as the key.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Hammer+May 20, 2007 02:02 pm--> (Hammer @ May 20, 2007 02:02 pm)
Severian
Yeah, one led to the other - without land redistribution, the Soviet government woulda just plain been overthrown.

It&#39;s pretty weird, anyway, to claim: Stalin&#39;s policy forcibly suppressing the peasantry&#39;s desire for land coulda been avoided - if the Bolsheviks has just followed a similarly stupid policy from the beginning&#33;

To reiterate, I quote a recent post by a left-communist (Hopscotch) on the subject of land redistribution, which addresses Severian&#39;s purely POLITICAL concerns:


However, when the Bolsheviks came to power he made a severe error in his support of land redistribution and the right of nations to self-determination. Without such policies the peasants, bitter perhaps at the loss of a chance to take the landlord’s old property, would nonetheless be organized into agricultural collectives operating with socialized means of production. Instead land was redistributed creating a sect of individualists opposed to socialization of agricultural production and the power of landlords was reinforced. It would take the iron fist of Stalin to undo the damage but Stalin’s rule, of course, was the rule of a state-bourgeoisie and not a party of the working class.

[/b]
What? That doesn&#39;t address any of my points.

It just says the peasants might be bitter, then passes on to other things as if the peasants&#39; opinions and feelings were unimportant.

Just another incredibly bureaucratic post by someone else who obviously has no revolutionary instinct or experience with real mass politics. Which is all about people&#39;s thoughts and feelings.

Again, the construction of socialism and communism is not just about producing more and more pig iron.

Revolutionary economic transformation is the conscious act of millions. It involves the conscious political mobilization of working people.

To create a socialist economic transformation in the countryside involves leading the people who are working and producing there. Not just ordering them around, as bureaucrats imagine.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Agriculture and Monopoly Capital: The Evolving Food System of the United States (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n3_v50/ai_21031832) (1998)


The industrial revolution and the development of industrial cities, first in England and then in the United States, required that farmers produce a larger and larger surplus of food for the growing urban market. Government policy encouraged farmers to produce an ever greater excess of food and fiber and to do so with less and less labor. Thus agriculture evolved from a subsistence agriculture to a commercial agriculture in which the role of the farm family was to produce for the market.

In the evolving commercial agriculture system, farmers became separated from the consumers. Increasingly, farmers sold their products to firms which would process and transport the food and fiber to the distant populations. These firms were eager to serve the function of linking the farmer to the consumer. Although relatively simple at the outset, the food system soon began to develop into many components, or stages, as a result of the specialization of function that is a characteristic of the industrialization model. As specialization evolved, the early "seed to plate" integrated food system developed into a multi-stage food system with hundreds of firms competing at the various stages. As the system developed more stages, the middlemen, as they were often called in the farmers&#39; movement literature, were not just the firms between the farmer and the public, but also included those enterprises that provided a growing number of inputs such as credit and farm equipment. As the food and fiber products moved from one stage to the next within the processing-distribution sectors, information was available on the price of the product. Many farm products were auctioned at public events where anyone could observe or bid. This was the agriculture and food system which was often held as a model of a competitive system in which 1) no firm bought or sold enough of the total goods or services to influence the price; 2) there was relatively easy entry and exit from any stage; and 3) information regarding the price of the goods and services along the total food chain was available to all. This food system in which the family farm structure was an important component was a good example of the early stage of capitalism. Later, the two processes of horizontal and vertical integration would begin altering the power relations between firms. This led to increased concentration of capital resources, and with it, increased concentration of control in the food system and the decline of the family farm structure.

...

In some commodity sectors, one can point to significant concentration of the processing firms in even the first half of the century. For example, pork and beef slaughtering and processing were dominated by Wilson, Armour, and Swift as we entered the twentieth century. Opposition to their practices in the Chicago stockyards inspired Upton Sinclair&#39;s The Jungle (1906) and led to the passage of the first Food and Drug Act that same year. And their collusion to set monopoly prices was largely responsible for the creation of the Packers and Stockyards Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1921 to monitor predatory practices. The Swift and Armour brand names exist today, but the firms were bought by ConAgra, which also bought Miller and Monfort. Some would argue that the fact that these firms do not exist today suggests that even firms with significant economic power can themselves be eliminated. But the important point is that they were absorbed within the larger agglomeration of capital. Still it is true that with the continuing trend toward concentration and centralization of capital no firm is safe from takeover or elimination in other ways. (This is often used as justification for why no government action should be taken to interfere with the free market.)

...

Forty percent or more of the processing of all agricultural commodities in the Midwest are controlled by the four largest firms. Although debate continues in the United States and in other countries on what constitutes an oligopolistic or near oligopolistic market, much of the economic literature suggests that when four firms control 40 percent of the market, they are able to exert influence on the market unlike that in a competitive system. In the meat sectors 87 percent of the beef cattle are slaughtered by the four largest firms (81 percent by the largest three) and 73 percent of the sheep are processed by the four largest firms. The control of hog slaughtering by the four largest firms increased from 37 percent in 1987 to 60 percent today. Over one half (55 percent) of the broilers (chickens produced for meat) today are produced and processed by the four largest firms, with Tyson now producing and processing almost one third of the broilers in the United States. In the crop sectors, the four largest firms process from 57 percent to 76 percent of the corn, wheat, and soybeans in the United States.

...

A third way [transnational corporations] TNCs can cross-subside and gain economic power is by operating in many different countries of the world. A firm like Cargill, which has operations in seventy countries, can absorb a loss in one or two countries over a few years as long they have good rates of return in other countries. It is easy to see how TNCs can gain footholds in new countries. They begin by producing or processing a commodity and thus increase the supply of the product which, assuming a given demand, drives the price down. In so doing, the price can drop below the cost of production. A local firm, especially if it is a single product producer, can&#39;t absorb such a loss for long, but a TNC can absorb the loss for a relatively long time.

The food systems of the world are becoming so integrated by the TNCs that it makes little sense to speak of a food system in a single country. For example, not only do IBP, Cargill, and ConAgra process 81 percent of the beef in the United States, they also now have feedlots and slaughtering facilities in Canada and about the same market dominance there. With the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, beef can easily travel back and forth across the border. It is possible for a 450-pound calf to be purchased by one of the three firms on one side of the border and sent across the border to be grown to 800-pounds in a contract arrangement with a rancher. The firm may then decide to move the animal across the border again to be finished in their feedlot. If the firm does not have sufficient capacity in their slaughtering facility in that country, it may move the animal across the border again to be slaughtered. The meat may once again be moved across the border to be consumed. The question then is, in what country was the animal produced?

...

Monopoly capital does not behave differently in the food system than in any other segment of the economy. Agriculture is unique primarily because it took monopoly capital so long to dominate the sector. The fact that agriculture is losing its uniqueness is perhaps best revealed by the fact that Mitsubishi, among the largest automakers and the second largest bank in the world, is now one of the world&#39;s largest beef processors.

[Leo]

Hammer;

I missed your question here - sorry about that. Here is the [very late] answer:


Next question: was Stalin&#39;s particularly grave error in pursuing collectivization the one of his preference of the kolkhozy over the sovkhozy? ... And what about the increasing presence of sovkhozy in the later Soviet periods?

I don&#39;t think there was an error in question: a member of a Kolkhoz, was paid a share of the farm’s product and profit from what was sold to the state according to the number of workdays as for Sovkhoz workers, they were paid regulated wages. In both cases, it was more or less wage-labor and more importantly capitalist relations existed in both kinds of farms. Now, why were there two different kind of farms then? Because of the situation in Russia. Sovkhoz farms were created by the state confiscating large estates and Kolkhoz farms were mostly created by combining smaller individual farms together. In that sense, Kolkhoz farms specifically dealt with the past, with transforming the small peasants and Sovkhoz farms were the plan for the future. So from the perspective of the Russian bourgeoisie, preferring Sovkhoz over Kolkhoz at first was impossible as it would not result in the way the bourgeoisie wanted it to be. By the time Soviet Union collapsed, there were 25.000 farms of which 45% were Sovkhoz and 55% were Kolkhoz, however Sovkhoz farms were more than twice the size of Kolkhoz farms.

[Die Neue Zeit]

as it would not result in the way the bourgeoisie wanted it to be

As in??? :huh:

[Leo]

What I am basically saying is that without Kolkhoz, Sovkhoz would not have been possible. Kolkhoz was more of an intermediary step between small farms owned by peasants as big industrialized state farms. Had they tried to go for Sovkhoz at the beginning, the results would be catastrophic for the Stalinist bourgeoisie, it would have completely failed. As you know, at the beginning, Sovkhoz farms had very little contribution to agricultural production. They were the model for the future to be built on Kolkoz farms. If they tried to build Sovkhoz farms on the existing agricultural situation, the results would have been, as I said, catastrophic for the Russian bourgeoisie.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Weren&#39;t the artel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivisation_in_the_USSR#Implementation) kolkhozy "disastrous enough," though?

Anyhow, here&#39;s an interesting website:

Peasant Social Worlds and their Transformation (http://era.anthropology.ac.uk/Era_Resources/Era/Peasants/)

And a more detailed history of Russian agriculture:

Russian Agrarian History and Soviet Debates on the Peasantry (http://era.anthropology.ac.uk/Era_Resources/Era/Peasants/russia.html)


Nevertheless, on balance, it&#39;s an acceptable rough generalisation to say that ‘land hunger&#39; became an increasingly important source of peasant unrest in the later 19th century. Furthermore, discontent with the fruits of ‘emancipation&#39; was hardened by the introduction of new tax policies designed to make the peasants pay for Russia&#39;s industrialisation.

These new policies were the work of the Tsarist minister Witte, who, anticipating later Soviet policy, rigged the urban-rural terms of trade to keep down industrial costs and reinforced this indirect policy with direct taxation of the peasantry to provide investment funds for creating modern heavy industry. During the 1890s, Russia made rapid ‘industrial progress&#39;, and this is the period when a relatively homogeneous classical proletariat begins to form in the appalling slums of Russia&#39;s industrial cities... But there was a change of agrarian policy, motivated not by a desire to compromise, but by the conviction that something more radical should be done to increase the pace of modernisation, in the face of Russia&#39;s recent military humiliations. The regime also reasoned that the easiest way to deal with peasant unrest was by removing the ‘peasants&#39; from the countryside and speeding up the ‘transition to full-blooded capitalism&#39;.

So in 1906, a new Tsarist minister, Stolypin, launched an all-out attack on the peasant commune, as the basis for the new policy known as the ‘wager on the strong&#39;. Stolypin aimed to resolve both Russia&#39;s economic problems and her social problems by fostering peasant differentiation and the destruction of the ‘village community&#39;: destroying the obshchina system would allow richer peasants to consolidate their landholdings and produce bigger commercial surpluses, fostering agricultural growth, whilst poorer peasants would be driven off the land and into the cities where they could be kept in check by repression more easily. The policy did lead to an increase in permanent as distinct from seasonal emigration to the cities from the villages of the Lakes/Central Industrial zones. It also had a big impact in the heavily commercialised region of the Ukraine, where peasant agriculture was already under severe pressure from the expansion of agro-industry and commercial wheat farming, and peasant differentiation of the Leninist kind is most readily apparent. Stolypin was assassinated by an anarchist (middle class) peasant organiser (Narodnik) in 1911, and there is no doubt that Stolypin&#39;s ‘reform&#39; of traditional agrarian structure, so like the liberal reform in Mexico, made an important contribution to fueling the social revolutionary process which erupted five years later, though it should be stressed that it was far from complete at the outbreak of the First World War. It was therefore no more than a further contributory pressure, but its importance lies in the legacy it left to the post-revolutionary regime.

...

Russian industry was largely destroyed by the wars of intervention, and a large proportion of the urban working class died in the Red Army. Given the military priorities, longer-term socialist development policy was not really on the agenda at this stage. But the Soviet regime did embark on some land redistribution, trying to dismantle the Stolypin reform as far as possible. By the mid-1920s, 90% of Russian land was in the hands of peasants, most of it technically still subject to communal redistribution under the obshchina system, even if the system was no longer functioning in the traditional way. What is certain, and needs stressing, is that only a tiny proportion of Russian agriculture was reorganised by the Soviet state before December 1929. The Soviet regime did introduce two new ‘socialist&#39; agricultural production forms more or less at the outset: sovkhoz (state farm whose members were paid wages) and kolkhoz (a collective farm whose assets are owned by its cooperating members). But neither system was much developed in the period of war communism, and what was done was partly undone during the period of NEP.

The 1918 decree of ‘land socialisation&#39; quite explicitly placed the ‘Sovkhoz&#39; state farms at the top of a hierarchy of desirable agrarian organisational forms, with individual peasant holdings a distinctively undesirable ‘obsolete and transitory&#39; third option, after cooperatives. So the ‘state capitalist&#39;-’rationality of large-scale production&#39; model was clearly strong in soviet thinking — as it also was, initially, in more modern socialist revolutions like the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution.



Zooming to the present, isn&#39;t it more "preferrable" to reduce the GLOBAL farmers to the point where their production is peanuts compared to the large industrial farms? I mean, a key reason for the incessant poverty in Africa is the continuation of agricultural subsidies to modern-day PEASANTS in the US and ESPECIALLY the EU. Get rid of this workforce garbage, hoard them into cities, have more industrial farming, and the capitalist system exhausts itself faster.

[At least this would piss off the fascists and their romantic notions of peasant-dominated national labour forces.]


In retrospect, what happened in the following year, 1925, turns out to have been the turning point. The harvest was really excellent, and government thoughts turned back to the problem of avoiding a repetition of the scissors crisis. This time, it was argued, price controls should be used to avoid too big a fall in price — and the system proposed to manage this was the same one we have today in the EEC: the state would buy the surplus grain and take it off the market.