The NEP and Marx

[Coggeh]

When Marx talked about the need for a bourgeois revolution etc before socialism could become apparent.

Was the NEP what he was talking about , Granted the material conditions may have called for some degree of market freedom but was this undeveloped stage of consciousness and opposition to state control of peasants the reason Marx called for the called for the capitalist industrialization of society to create a mass working class instead of what you had in Russia .

So the question really is , was the NEP an indication that Marx and the Mensheviks had it right?

[Tower of Bebel]

Marx had it right, the Mensheviks had it wrong. I thought Marx had abandonned the idea that capitalism could turn the whole world into equal capitalist, bourgeois democratic nations.
I think the NEP was an option because there was still no clear sign that the international socialist revolution has failed. It wouldn't hurt the dictatorship of the proletariat and poorer peasants as much as a fast bureaucratic industrialisation and collectivisation?

In short, I'm not sure of this since I still need to study this part of history.

[Random Precision]

The NEP was a temporary concession to capitalism- events such as the peasant uprisings and most especially the Kronstadt rebellion proved to the Bolsheviks that the policy of War Communism was not suited for peacetime, and it would in fact only cause the peasants and workers to turn against their own state.