Guy A. Aldred Archive
Written: 1935.
Source: RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
The struggle of the Trotskyist Opposition for planned economy lasted from 1923 to 1928. Plan was introduced into Soviet economy in July 1920. The entire railroad system was a wreck, and Trotsky was given the job of restoring transportation. His famous “ Order No. 1042 “ was the first of a series of systematic decrees instructing measures which evolved order and regularity out of collapse and chaos. Lenin described Trotsky’s measures as examples of what had to be done in other branches of industry. Trotsky reported to the 8th Congress of the Soviets and with Emshanov prepared a thesis on the need for a plan in economy. This thesis was defended by Lenin. By 1923 Lenin had withdrawn from the party council and Trotsky stood alone in the Executive Council of the part y in defense of planned economy. He insisted that the only material foundation for Socialism in Russia was the development of large machine industry, particularly in the realm of agriculture, and urged that such development was imperative in view of the retardation of the international revolution and the menace of the petty bourgeois strata of the village population. The reply of the bureaucracy was to launch a furious attack upon him. This attack was the beginning of the struggle for what afterwards became known as the Five Year Plan.
The Stalinists urged that the planned economy proposed by Trotsky was too extreme and that it menaced the building of Socialism in Russia. It is obvious that these objections were contradictory. Rykov reported to the 5th Congress of the Comintern that Trotsky’s proposals were a petty bourgeois deviation from Leninism and that the Russian party leadership was doing all that could be expected of it in the field of industry and agriculture. Stalin sneered that it was not a plan that the peasant needed but a good rain for his crops. Trotsky’s insistence on the danger of the rising Kulaks was derided.
At this time the Kulak was becoming the dominant figure in the countryside and was permeating the party with his ideology. The Leningrad proletariat became alarmed at the inroads made by him and his urban associates, the Nepmen. The Stalin-Bucharin leadership identified itself with the Kulak against the proletariat and so the Leningrad proletariat finally compelled Zinoviev, who had fathered the campaign against Trotskyism, to make a bloc with the 1923 opposition.
Kalinin denounced the poor peasants as “ lazy-good-for-nothings “ because they did not accumulate. The fact that the President of the Soviet Republic could advance the theory of private accumulation as opposed to planned economy illustrates the capitalistic basis of the Soviet Union. This mediocre official praised the industry of “ the economically powerful peasant,” the Kulak. Bucharin in a famous or infamous speech, according to the Socialist viewpoint, advised the well-to-do-peasants: “ Enrich yourselves.” Pravda in April, 1925, praised the Kulaks for being “ well-to-do” peasants and added that the “ economic possibilities of the Kulaks must be unfettered.” Continuing its opposilion to planned economy, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, in 1926, granted the vote to the Kulaks, thus extending political recognition to the exploiting and actually money-lending peasants.
In 1925, Trotsky published his “Whither Russia,” in which he urged that the Soviet Republic should adopt an independent agricultural reproduction based on collective accumulation. He declared that this would show a speed of industrial progress unknown and impossible under the private accumulation of ordinary capitalism. His prediction, which time showed to be a serious underestimation of the reality, was the subject for great merriment among the Stalinists. Stalin met the idea with ironical ridicule and Bucharin declared that along the lines of collective accumulation Russia would build Socialism “ with the speed of the tortoise “ or at a snail’s pace.
The 1927 platform of the opposition was suppressed. The bureaucracy refused to have it printed, which only shows how the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat can be used to suppress the enlightenment of the proletariat. The platform was circulated in mimeographed form and its circulation was made a crime punishable by imprisonment or exile. There are Bolsheviks in Siberia to-day who were sent there in 1927 for having circulated a proposal for planned economy which Stalin was compelled to adopt, in a corrupted and perverted form in 1929. These Bolsheviks joined the old Bolsheviks who had been persecuted in 1920 or 1923 for developing a definite Anti-Parliamentarian program; and they must have joined some Anarchists who had been sent into exile for alleged peasant counter-revolution. How any peasant counter-revolution could exceed in reaction the reaction of the policy of Stalinism it is difficult to understand.
A first Five Year Plan was elaborated on behalf of the Stalinists by Rykov and Krzhizhanovsky. It was the answer to the Opposition and it was virtually the negation of all idea of planned economy. The timid worthless proposal suggested an annual growth of 9 per cent. for the first year, with a decreasing percentage to 4 per cent. for the last year of the plan. The Trotskyist Opposition demanded a categorical condemnation of this plan, and proposed a 20 per cent. annual growth. Six years later the bolder proposal proved an entirely moderate figure compared with the reality.
Answering the Stalinists, the Opposition proposed to raise its funds by a forced loan from the Kulaks. Thereupon the Stalinists raised the hue and cry against “ the counterrevolutionary Trotskyists.” Stalin, Rykov, and Kuybischev issued a signed manifesto to the whole Russian people, announcing that the Opposition proposed “ to rob the peasantry.” In the cities, Stalin and Bucharin assured the disturbed proletarians that there was no danger to be feared from the Kulaks owing to their “ insignificant percentage.” The need for collectivization, or what Lenin pretended was State Capitalism controlled by a proletarian state, was minimized to vanishing point. As late as 1928, the principal agrarian “ specialist “ of the Stalinist apparatus, Yakovlov, the Commisar for Agriculture, declared that collective farming would for years to come, “ remain little islets in the sea of private peasant farms.” The Opposition were all expelled at the 15th Party Congress and Rykov hectored the expelled leaders with the question : “ If the Kulak is so strong why hasn’t he .... ? ”
Rykov did not have long to wait. A few months later the Rykov-Stalin Five Year Plan was revised completely, thus justifying the attack upon its inadequacy. If, later, the Russian Five Year Plans revealed essential, positive features, this fact was due to the five year unremitting struggle of the expelled Trotskyist Opposition. Converting the Stalinists to even an elementary idea of the need for planned economy was itself a Five Year Plan.