Written: 22 October 1932.
Source: The Militant, Vol. VI No. 1, 7 January 1933, p. 4.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2014. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.
The official press now prints from issue to issue an uninterrupted list of accusations against the workers, the directors, the technicians, managers, cooperative personnel, and the trade union-lets: all guilty of not fulfilling the plans, the instructions and “the six conditions”. But where are the causes for this? Objective causes do not obtain. To blame for it all is the ill will of those entrusted with the fulfilling. And that is just what Pravda writes, “Do there obtain any objective causes whatever for this deterioration in the work? None whatever!” (October 2, 1932). People simply do not want to work as they should – and that’s all there is to it. The October plenum of the CEC has ascertained that “there is unsatisfactory management in every link down the line.” Except, of course, that link which is called the Central Executive Committee. But are there really no objective causes for the poor quality of the workmanship? A specified amount of time is required not only for the ripening of wheat but also for the familiarization with the complex technological processes. Psychological processes, it is true, are more pliable than those of vegetation, but this pliability has its limits. One cannot skip over them. And in addition – and this is no less” important – one cannot demand the maximum of intensity under minimum of nourishment.
The resolution of the October plenum of the CEC accuses the workers and the administrators of their inability “to clinch” their highest achievements, and of their continual falling below the marks they had set. In reality, the breakdowns were ingrained in the character of the achievements themselves. By virtue of an exceptional effort a man can lift a weight that is far above his “average” strength. But he cannot long sustain such a load over his head. It is absurd to accuse him of his inability “to clinch” his effort.
Soviet economy is in danger! It is not difficult to determine its ailment. It springs from the nature of the successes themselves. From an excessive and poorly calculated strain the economy has suffered a rupture. One must proceed to cure, painstakingly and perseveringly. Rakovsky warned us as early as 1930, “We are entering an entire epoch, which will pass under the heading of payment in full for the entire past.”
The second Five Year Plan was fashioned in the scales of “gigantism”. [1] It is difficult, to be more correct, it is impossible to judge “by sight” the extent to which the final indices of the second Five Year Plan are exaggerated. But the question now touches not the balance of the Second Five Year Plan, but its points of departure, the line of its jointure with the first Five Year Plan. The first year of the second Five Year Plan has received an onerous inheritance from the last year of the first Five Year Plan.
The second plan, according to the design, is the spiral continuation of the first plan. But the first plan has not been brought to completion. The second plan from the very beginning is left suspended in mid-air. If one leaves things to go on as they have been, then the second Five Year Plan will begin by patching up the holes of the first under the administrative whip. This means that the crisis will be aggravated. In this manner one can bring matters to a catastrophe.
There is only one way out: the inauguration of the Second Five Year Plan must be put off for one year. 1933 must be made a buffer between the first Five Year Plan and the second. In the course of this period it is necessary on the one hand, to verify the inheritance left by the first Five Year Plan, to fill in the most yawning gaps, to mitigate the unbearable disproportions and to straighten out the economic front; and on the other hand, to reconstruct the Second Five Year Plan, so calculating it as to make its points of departure about flush to the actual and not imaginary results of the first Five Year Plan.
Doesn’t this simply mean that the period for the completion of the first plan will be prolonged another year? No, unfortunately that is not the case. The material consequences of the four years’ of hue and cry cannot be stricken out from reality by one stroke of a pen. A careful checking over is necessary, a regulation, and a determination of the coefficients of growth actually achieved. The present condition of economy excludes in general any possibility of planned work. 1933 cannot be a supplementary year of the first Five Year Plan, nor the first year of the second. It must occupy an independent position between the two, in order to assure the mitigation of the consequences of adventurism and the preparation of the material and moral prerequisites for planned expansion.
The Left Opposition in its own time was the first to demand the inauguration of the Five Year Plan. Now it is duty bound to say: It is necessary to put off the second Five Year Plan. Away with shrieking enthusiasm! Away with stock Jobbing! There is no reconciling them with planned activity. Then, you are for retreat? Yes, for a temporary retreat. And what about the prestige of the infallible leadership? The fate of the dictatorship of the proletariat is more important than blown-up prestige.
Having been knocked off balance, Soviet economy is in need of serious reconstruction. Under capitalism the broken equilibrium is restored by the blind forces of the crisis. The Socialist republic allows of applying conscious and rational cures.
It is impossible, of course, to halt production in the whole country as it is halted during repairs in a factory or in an enterprise. But there is also no need whatever for it. It is enough to lower the tempos. The current productive labor for 1933 cannot be carried on without a plan, but this plan must be one for a single year, worked out on the basis of ‘moderate quality quotas.
Attainments in quality must be given first place. Inopportune constructions should be liquidated; all forces and resources must be concentrated upon constructions of the first rank; the interrelations between the various branches of industry must be balanced on the basis of experience; factories must be put in order; equipment must be restored.
Let there be an end to driving, and spurring, and establishing records, but let the productivity of each enterprise be subjected to its technological rhythm. Return to the laboratories whatever has been taken too soon from out of the laboratories. Finish building whatever still remains unfinished. Put in order the interrelations between the departments in factories. Straighten out whatever has been bent. Repair that which has been damaged. Prepare the factory for a transition to the highest stage. Quality quotas must be given a character both supple and conditional in order that they may not interfere with achievements in quantity.
1933 must gain complete mastery over the labor turn-over, by bettering the conditions of the workers; that’s where the beginning must be made, for herein is to be found the key to everything else Workers and their families must be assured of food, shelter and clothing. No matter what the price!
The management and the proletarian cadres of factories should be freed of supplementary burdens, such as the planting of potatoes, breeding rabbits etc. All questions relating to supplying factories with necessities must be regulated as independent and not supplementary tasks.
Order must be brought into the production of objects for mass consumption. Commodities must be adapted to human needs and not to the raw by-products of the heavy industry.
The process of inflation must be stopped with an iron hand and the stable monetary unit must be restored. This difficult and painful operation cannot be undertaken without boldly curtailing capital investments, without sacrificing many .hundred millions that have been inexpediently or inopportunely sunk in new constructions, in order that thus losses into billions may be forestalled in the future.
A temporary retreat is exigent both in industry and in rural economy. The hithermost line of the retreat cannot be determined beforehand. It will be revealed only in the experience of capital reconstruction.
The managing organs must control, assist, and pick out everything that is capable of living and functioning but they should desist from driving enterprises to their doom, as is the case now. The economy and the human beings need a breathing spell from administrative violence and adventurism.
Many managers, as is shown by the papers, have independently arrived at the conclusion that 1933 must differ in some essential manner from the elapsing year. But they do not draw their ideas to their conclusion, in order not to expose themselves to danger.
As touches the rail transport, Economic Life writes, “One of the most important tasks of 1933 must be the task of a full and final liquidation of each and every imperfection, non-completion, poor tie-up and disproportion in the functioning of the different integral parts of the transport mechanism.” Well spoken! This formula should be accepted in full, and be expanded to apply to the entire economy, as a whole.
As touches the tractor plant in Stalingrad, Pravda writes, “We must decisively dispense with defective methods of workmanship, we must put an end to fever along the conveyor in order to guarantee a regulated output of production.”. That is absolutely correct! Planned economy, taken as a whole, represents, in its type, a conveyor on a state scale. The method of stuffing up holes is incompatible with planned production. 1933 must “put an end to fever along the conveyor”, or at least we must considerably lower the temperature.
The Soviet government itself has announced by proclamation a “turn” from quantity to quality in the sphere of rural economy. That ,is correct, but the question must be approached on a much wider scale. The matter touches not only the quality of the cultivation of the soil, but the entire kolkhoz and sovkhos policy and praxis. The turn from quantity to quality must be carried over into the functioning of the administration itself.
First of all, a retreat is inevitable in the sphere of collectivization. Here more than anywhere else the administration is the captive of its own mistakes. While superficially continuing to autocratically command, and to specify under the signature of Molotov and Stalin the precise number of acres for grain tillage, the bureaucracy, in reality, is now floating with the current.
Concurrently, in the villages there has appeared a new stratum of the so-called “retired” i.e., former kolkhoz members. Their number is growing. It is out and out insanity to keep by force within the collectives peasants who pilfer the crops, who sell the seed in bazaars and subsequently demand it from the government for sowing. However, it is no less criminal to leave the process of disintegration to its own course. The tendency to place a cross, just now, over the collectivization movement is now evidently raising its head even within party ranks. To allow this would be to throw out the child from the tub along with the soap suds.
1933 must serve to bring the collective rural economy into alignment with the technical, economic and cultural resources. This means – the selection of the most viable collectives, their reorganization in correspondence with experience and the wishes of the basic peasant mass, first of all the peasant poor. And, at the same time – the formulation of such conditions for leaving the kolkhozes as would reduce to a minimum the disruption of rural economy, to say nothing of the direct dangers of civil war.
The policy of mechanically “liquidating the kulak” is now factually discarded. A cross should be placed over it officially. And simultaneously it is necessary to establish the policy of severely restricting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak. With this goal in mind the lowest strata of the villages must be welded together into a union of the peasant poor.
In 1933 the moujiks will till the land, the textile workers will produce calico, the blast furnaces will smelt metal, and the railroads will transport people and the products of labor. But the highest criterion of this year will lie not in producing as much as one possibly can and as fast as possible but in putting economy in order; in checking over the inventories, separating the healthful from the diseased, and the good from the bad; in clearing away the rubbish and mud, in building the lacking houses and dining rooms, in finishing the roofs, in installing sanitary ventilation. For, in order that they may work well, people must first of all live like human beings, and consequently satisfy their human needs.
To set aside a special year of capital reconstruction is a measure which by itself solves nothing whatever of course. It can attain its major significance only under a change in the very approach to economy, and, first of all, to its living protagonists, the workers and peasants. The approach to economy pertains to the domain of politics. The weapon of politics is the party.
Our task of tasks is to resurrect the party. Here as well we must take an inventory of the onerous inheritance of the post-Lenin period, we must separate the healthy from the ailing, the good from the bad, we must clear away the rubbish and the mud, we must air and disinfect all the offices of the bureaucracy. After the party there follow the Soviets and the trade unions. The capital reconstruction of all Soviet organizations is the most important and the most urgent task of 1933.
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L. Trotsky |
1. The hostility, an outright hatred, toward “gigantism” is rapidly growing in Soviet circles, as a natural and an (Inevitable reaction against the adventurism of the last period. There is no need, however, to explain to what extent this reaction, from which the petty bourgeois skinflint spirit derives satisfaction, may in the future become dangerous to the socialist construction.
Last updated on: 6 February 2015