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On Stalin's MARXISM AND “MARKET SOCIALISM” (On Stalin’s “Economic Problems” Part Two) By the British and Irish Communist Organisation “Though it is said, Proverbs, 23.4, ‘Labour not to be rich’: the meaning is, that you make not Riches your chief end: Riches for our fleshly ends must not ultimately be intended or sought. But in subordination to higher things they may: That is, you may labour in that manner as tendeth most to success and lawful gain: You are bound to improve your Masters Talents; but then your end must be, that you may be the better provided to do God service, and may do the more good with what you have. If God show you a way in which you may lawfully get more than in another way, (without any wrong to your soul, or to any other) if you refuse this, and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your Calling, and you refuse to be God’s Steward, and to accept his gifts, and use them for him when he requireth it: You may labour to be Rich for God, though not for the flesh and sin”. (Rev. Richard Baxter – Theologian of the English bourgeois (“Puritan”) revolution. “A Christian Directory: Or, A Summ of Practical Theologie and Cases of Conscience.” 1673 p. 450) CONTENTS Introduction Commodities The “Socialist Commodity” Marx & Engels on the commodity The Cause of Value in “Socialist” Production The Law of Value The “Market” and the Market The “Socialist” Market “Socialism”: A new way of Describing Capitalism Market Demand Prices of production The History of Market Socialism The “Stalin-Critics” Lenin Conclusion Appendix: Economic Theory in China First edition: July 1969 Present edition: September 1971 PREFACE On Stalin’s “Economic Problems”, Part 1, dealing with the general background of political economy against which “Economic Problems” made its appearance was published in March 1968. The appearance of Part Two has been delayed by the pressure of current events in Ireland. A third part, dealing with the economic history of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe should be published in due course. The present pamphlet deals almost entirely with the theory of “market socialism” as stated in the writings of revisionist economists since 1956. We remarked in Part One that the main theoretical writings of the “Marxists” Lange and Dobb have been published in specialist bourgeois economic periodicals, such as the Economic Journal, which are virtually unknown in the working class movement. At that time we were finding it difficult to get translations of theoretical material on economics published in the Soviet Union and E. Europe. We had to infer a great deal from the few hints that appeared in such “theoretical” revisionist periodicals as World Marxist Review (and for the most part our inferences were accurate). But, as we have since discovered, we were in this predicament only because we searched for this material in publications circulated by the revisionists in the working class movement. In 1958 the main revisionist economic journal in Russia, Voprosy Ekonomiki (Problems of Economics), began to be published in its entirety in an English translation by the International Arts and Sciences Press New York. Since about 1960 this English “Problems of Economics” has consisted of translations of the main articles from all of the main specialist economic publications in Russia. “Problems of Economics” is published through an official collaboration between the US publishing company and the Russian authorities. Its function is to provide the monopoly capitalists with information about developments in the Russian economy. To make sure that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands it costs about £2 per copy (approx. 30 pages). And of course this exceptionally informative publication is never advertised in the revisionist press. Though it escaped our notice for five years, we have now got our ear to this channel of communication between the revisionists and the monopoly capitalists, and as a consequence the present pamphlet is more comprehensive than it could have been on its intended publication in 1968. (Articles in magazines here referred to by their Russian titles will usually be found in “Problems of Economics” about three months after the given date. Page numbers of Capital refer to the Progress Publishers edition.) July 1969 IRISH COMMUNIST ORGANISATION Preface to second edition A number of minor amendments have been made to the second edition, none of which affect the sense of the pamphlet. Additional material, dealing with some aspects of political economy in China, has been added. This material was first published in THE IRISH COMMUNIST in February and March 1970. Publication of the third part of this series of pamphlets, dealing with the history of economic development in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, has been delayed considerably by the demands of current politica1 developments in Ireland. It is now unlikely to be published before the end of 1972. September 1971 IRISH COMMUNIST ORGANISATION INTRODUCTION The most comprehensive statement of the “market socialist” position which has so far been made by modern revisionist political economy has come from the Czech revisionist Ota Sik. We quote from Sik’s “Socialist Market Relations and Planning” (which is included in “Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth: Essays presented to M. Dobb.” Cambridge University Press, 1967) Stalin, writes Sik “committed….serious theoretical errors, which flowed in large measure from the state of the economy at the time. He put forward the theory that commodity money relations are in the nature of a foreign element in a socialist economy which has to suffer them purely because their existence is forced upon it by the co- operative forms of socialist ownership (i.e. the collective farms ICO) which he regarded as inferior forms in which socialist principles were inadequately embodied.” “He believed that in the socialist state sector there could be room only for accounting and recording of values in response to external relations (with cooperatives and other countries) and that genuine commodity-money relations could not exist between socialist state enterprises…. This theory of Stalin’s which was strictly adhered to during his lifetime and is still widely applied in practice, became a deeply- rooted dogma with grave consequences for socialist economic growth”. (p. 146) Sik holds that the market is not a heritage of capitalism which it is one of the tasks of socialism to abolish. On the contrary, there is an “objective necessity for the existence of commodity money relations and the market in a socialist economy,” and there is an “impossibility of resolving economic conflicts when these relations are restricted or suppressed by the old method of administrative planning. The explanation of market relations is…. the inner contradictions of socialist labour at the given stage of the development of the productive forces and, therefore, the market…. appear(s) as a necessary economic form of resolving these contradictions within the framework of socialist planning.” (p. 148) The view of orthodox Marxism has been that the scale on which the market continued to exist in the Soviet Union was due to the fact that the socialist revolution captured an economy in which capitalism was only weakly developed, in which the industrial proletariat constituted a small minority of the population and in which the peasantry constituted a great majority: the persistence of commodity relations was a heritage not merely of capitalism but of the low level of capitalist development in Tsarist Russia as a whole. According to Sik this view is false. The continuance of commodity relations was not a heritage of capitalism, or of the backwardness of the economy which the working class seized. It reflected an inherent need of the socialist economy as such. In fact the need of the socialist economy required not merely the continuance but the expansion of the market economy. Because he failed to realise this Stalin did grave damage to the economy. Lest the matter be confused by the recent attacks by the Soviet revisionists on Sik we will show that his views are shared by the leading Russian economists – though in Russia they are stated more obliquely. Furthermore, Sik’s views were made absolutely clear in 1964 and were not condemned until 1968 by the Russian revisionists. And the reason they were condemned was not because of their nature but because of Sik’s blunt manner of stating them, because of the speed with which they were being implemented in the Czech economy, and because they formed part of a strong bourgeois nationalist movement which was challenging the Russian domination of Czechoslovakia. As long ago as 1958 V. Venzher (whose views were exposed by Stalin in “Economic Problems”, and who is now a respected revisionist), wrote: “Socialist commodity production is commodity production of a special kind, its development being directly connected with strengthening and expanding commodity/money relations and with the gradual dying away of natural economy relations. Because of social diversity, labour under socialism preserves its dual character and the goods created by labour are exchanged according to the amount of abstract labour embodied in them. That is why all products have a commodity form.” “Socialist production is large-scale commodity production planned on the scale of the whole national economy”. “Socialist exchange is realised on the basis of the law of value”. (Commodity Production Under Socialism and The Collective Farms: Voprosy Ekonomiki, August 1958) “Under socialism products and services are also produced as commodities and also sold for money.” (B.G. Liberman. Are We Flirting With Capitalism? Profits and “Profits”. Soviet Life, July 1965) Examples could be multiplied endlessly. There is no disagreement between the Russian revisionists and Sik on this point.
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