The Problem of Transition: Development, Socialism and Lenin's NEP

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The Problem of Transition: Development, Socialism and Lenin's NEP

By C.J. Atkins

Editor's note: This article is excerpted from a larger thesis by Atkins titled, "Competing Agendas: Class Struggle, the Chinese State and the World Economy."

Socialism can be defined as a phase of social-economic development during which ever-larger numbers of people in society are increasingly empowered to collectively control the direction of their lives through the process of incrementally crafting new democratic means of ownership and institutions for running the economy and other areas of social life. It is a society in which surplus labor is shifted away from individual, private profit toward allocation based on social needs and the public good, thus moving toward the resolution of the contradictions of capitalist social relations.

But socialism is not just democracy and collectivity for their own sake; it is not simply a project for spiritual freedom or equalitarian psychological satisfaction. It is also very much about ensuring ever-rising standards of living and material security to the members of society as a whole. In other words, egalitarianism is a laudable goal, but only if society actually has the material resources to give it substance. There must exist the capability to produce a sufficient economic surplus to satisfy the ever-growing needs of society. And that surplus has to be produced in a manner that is efficient in the employment of natural resources and productive forces (means of production and labor power) and which supplies use values in accordance with the social and economically realistic need for them – a point on which too often the existing socialist countries fell short. A "socialist" system of common poverty, shared underdevelopment or wastefulness is not something to strive for.

While definitions of socialism are of course not blueprints to be drafted in advance with all the details predetermined, there are a few basic aspects that can be delineated. Socialism, as a socio-economic system succeeding capitalism, would be characterized by the social ownership and control of the decisive sectors of an economy, such as the most important industrial firms, the banks and financial institutions, the energy and natural resources industries, health care and social services, and probably much of the national distribution/transportation system. Democratization of the workplace would be central to gradually altering the exploitative relations which characterize the capitalist enterprise, making it possible to begin to develop in practice a new kind of economy in which those who create value have more meaningful collective control over their conditions of work and the disposition of that surplus value through social control of investment. As socialism becomes consolidated, services such as health care, education through university level, the ending of illiteracy, malnutrition, and unemployment would be priorities if they had not already been achieved. Social ownership would not necessarily be straight-jacketed into the two simple categories of "state property" and "collective property," as was the distinction made in Soviet political economy. Ownership could conceivably take various forms depending on the goals of planned production and social needs: public or state ownership at various levels, publicly-invested and controlled enterprises, cooperative/collective and joint ownership forms, and likely some role for private ownership in certain businesses or industries for at least some length of time. The exact forms of ownership cannot accurately be predicted beforehand. Rather, they have to be crafted in the course of political development and in line with the needs of a balanced economy and sustainability. The political system would be one in which the interests of the working class of a society are the dominant, but not necessarily the only, political force. State institutions may vary temporally and geographically and be characterized by long periods of flux as the political and economic tasks change. The governing party or coalition would be subject to regular elections and the necessity of constantly winning anew its popular mandate. As Wu Yiching reminds us, “socialism without meaningful democracy is unfeasible.”

The definition of socialism given above, prefaced as it is as a period successive to capitalism, implies the pre-existence of highly-developed productive forces and the means of common prosperity – or at the very least access to them from other countries or economies. While it may be true that high levels of human development (social, economic, and cultural) have been achieved by the socialist countries with low levels of income in the past, the reality is that in order to prevent stagnation and promote further development, a modern industrial foundation has proven a necessity.

Looking at the first attempt at building socialism in the Soviet Union after the 1917 revolution and how it came up against a wall of economic underdevelopment can provide an insight into some of the challenges which many underdeveloped countries find themselves facing today. For example, many today dismiss China’s economic reform as a return to capitalism. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, however, also faced criticism during the early years of Soviet power for the course of their economic program. Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) was often characterized, both outside and inside the Communist movement, as an abandonment of socialism and Marxist ideology. It seems to be the case that any recognition of the aforementioned fundamentals of historical materialism and practical policy which ensues from them (whether in Moscow in 1921 or Beijing in 1978) will inevitably give rise to the charge of heresy in certain sectors.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8331/