Introduction to the German Edition¶
Core Argument¶
In the introduction to the German edition, the chapter establishes that the collectivisation of peasant holdings is an essential component of socialist transformation, yet its scope and tempo are determined not by governmental decree but by objective economic factors: the level of economic development, the relationship between industry and agriculture, and the technical resources available to the latter. Industrialisation drives modern culture and furnishes the material basis for collectivisation. While the proletariat naturally desires the highest possible tempos to defend the new society from external threats and to raise living standards, these tempos are constrained by material and cultural levels, the relationship between town and country, and the limited capacity of the masses to sacrifice present comforts for future gains. Optimum tempos are those that promote rapid growth while securing social stability and the worker-peasant alliance.
The October Revolution inherited not only capitalism’s internal contradictions but also profound material contradictions between capitalism and pre-capitalist forms of production, rooted in town-country relations, industrial disproportions, and geographical-demographic conditions. The Soviet economy’s strength lies in nationalised, planned production; its weakness is post-revolutionary isolation from the resources of the world economy, even on a capitalist basis. These contradictions do not disappear but revive with economic recovery, demanding access to world markets. A new contradiction has emerged: concentrated industry enabling rapid development versus isolation blocking normal use of world economic reserves. This causes painful difficulties, including worsening conditions for workers and peasants despite overall economic growth. Crises demonstrate that capitalist productive forces cannot be harmonised socialistically within national markets, only internationally. The October Revolution remains legitimate as the first stage of a world revolution spanning decades, not a self-sufficient national socialist project.
Two opposing conceptions of socialism confront one another. The Left Opposition’s course seeks to strengthen the proletarian dictatorship in one country until further world revolution, while the official Stalinist course aims to construct an isolated national socialist society ‘in the shortest possible time’. Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country, formulated in autumn 1924, contradicts Marxism and Lenin’s school. Marxism takes the world economy as an independent reality dominating national markets; productive forces have outgrown national boundaries. Building a nationally isolated socialist society means pulling productive forces backward. Stalin’s claim that communist parties should base activity on ‘general features’ common to all countries, with national peculiarities merely ‘supplementary’, is false. National peculiarities are original combinations of the world process, the crystallisation of uneven development. The law of uneven development does not replace world economy laws but is subordinate to them. Stalin’s conception elevates Russia’s peculiarities above the world economy, producing a dualistic strategy: Messianic nationalism for the USSR combined with bureaucratically abstract internationalism for other countries. If socialism could be fully realised within the USSR, the Communist International would be reduced to frontier patrols protecting Soviet construction from intervention.
From this follow two economic lines. Stalin’s 1924 theory, with Bukharin’s ‘tortoise pace’ formula, reflected a brief revival stage. When dependence on world markets reasserted itself, panic replaced complacency, and creeping penny-pinching gave way to adventurism—both rooted in national socialism. The leadership tries to make a virtue of isolation, constructing a programme of economically-isolated socialism, leading to dangerous collectivisation with pre-capitalist inventory. A realistic programme for an isolated workers’ state must seek the optimum tempo, not maximum, systematically improving living standards and strengthening the worker-peasant alliance until revolution in advanced countries ends isolation. The struggle is between two theories: socialism in one country versus permanent revolution.