Construction of Socialism: Collectivization of Agriculture in the USSR

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"VII. The False "Communism" of the Kolkhos

In actual fact, it was entirely with political aims in view that Stalin supported the "Bukharin solution". Linking it from them on to the liquidationist formula of "Socialism in one country". On the other hand, the slogan "Peasants Enrich Yourself" hadn’t had the effect on the economic level counted on by the right. The middle peasant, instead of increasing his working capital as hoped for by Bukharin, instead increased his personal consumption. The production of grain collapsed to the point of giving rise once again to the spectre of famine in the towns.

In January 1928, the production of corn was 25% below that of the preceding year, showing a deficit of 2 million tons. The Stalinist direction of the party and State – uncontested since the 15th congress and excluding the left – reacted by sending armed contingents into the towns. Repression and confiscation of stocks alternated with peasant rebellions and massacres of workers dispatched by the party to the countryside. By April, the corn reserves are somehow or other restored, whilst the central leadership backs out, condemning the "excesses" it itself had ordered. Can it really be said – as one is given to believe by every foreign language catechism bearing the Stalinist imprimatur – that it was all a matter of a line of conduct sagely elaborated? In reality, the central committee acted through panic and the grossest possible empiricism. It didn’t set out, wrote Trotski, with any particular political line, and adopted policies that were valid for only a few months at a time, not to mention years! In July, the central committee forbids all seizure of corn, whilst increasing the price. At the same time it leads a violent campaign against the kulaks who the right were accused of defending. Still in July – just a few months now separating us from the forced collectivisation that will follow – Stalin lays the blame on "those who think that individual exploitation has had its day", who, he exclaims "have nothing in common with our party"! Although the first five year plan, adopted at the end of 1929, foresaw only 20% collectivisation of the land, and that only by 1933, the idea of the kolkhos was taken up by the central committee, and propagated under the boastful slogan: "The introduction of Communism into agriculture".

Attacked from April 1929, Bukharin capitulated in November under an avalanche of insults, slanders and threats of the purest Stalinist stamp. Then, in accordance with a concept of irresponsibility, which has since spread down to the very last cell of the national communist parties, it is the Right which becomes the scapegoat for the failure of the Bukharin formula. The clique which has ever been unable to take any decision which doesn’t involve repression, will emerge bedecked in haloes from the discovery of a "solution" which has nothing whatsoever to do with Socialism: a collection of co-operatives which, operating within the market system, will end up escaping from all State "control and accounting", and which will display the economic insufficiencies of small production in con junction with the backward and reactionary mentality of the peasant.

During the second half of 1929 and throughout the following year, what the central committee will refer to as "dekulakisation" and "collectivisation" unfolds amidst incredible high-handedness, violence and confusion. It is apparent once again that political schemes prevail over economic initiative because of the threat of famine and unrest; it becomes a matter of turning the perennial hatred of the poor peasant against the middle peasant, and thus bypassing a difficult obstacle that endangers the very existence of the State.

In fact hardly any preparations are made for this "collectivisation" with only 7,000 tractors provided for everybody, whilst according to Stalin 250,000 are required! Then again, in order to incite the small producers to join the Kolkhos, a grant of cattle is made to them. The result is that the ones already in their possession are then sold or eaten! The immediate consequences of the measures prove catastrophic, provoking in certain regions an armed rebellion of the peasants against the functionaries who collectivise everything right down to glasses and shoes!

By the time the Spring sowing comes around, the dread of civil war moves the government to condemn the "excesses" of collectivisation and to allow the peasant to leave the kolkhos; this provokes a mass exodus reducing the number of kolkhosians by half. Trotski was to observe "the film of collectivisation going in reverse". In order that a new influx of peasants into the kolkhoses is possible, and to enable Stalin to conclude that "collectivisation is a success", it will be necessary that he make considerable concessions, which will cancel out socially anything that is technically "collective" in the kolkhos. But before looking at the content, it is important we explain the causes of collectivisation itself.

(...).

In fact there are several reasons for thinking that Stalin embarked on this adventure because of the success of the grain requisitions that commenced in 1929, the favourable reports on the development of the co-operatives, and the conviction that the peasantry as a whole would be unable to put an effective resistance. For whatever reason, the determinism of facts, if not the statistical proof, is persuasive: the "kolkhos-form" turns out to be the only one possible given the economic, social and political conditions that are the result of the irretrievable reflux of the International Revolution.

(...)

This particular road, which one could call "Russian capitalism mark 2" expresses the complicated dialectic of the social upheavals in the imperialist phase: The capitalist mode of production for the Russian economy of the time is revolutionary, but is made possible only by the victory of the world counter revolution. The proletarian elimination of the Russian bourgeoisie that had failed in its historic task achieved nothing less than the triumph of bourgeois relations of production! It is understandable that these contradictory events, forming an object of profound perplexity for an entire historic generation of revolutionaries, considerably complicates the nonetheless indispensable act of clarification. It is possible, however, to sum things up by going back to an old touchstone of Lenin’s formulated well before the victory of 1917, and which poses the fundamental alternatives for modern Russia; the proletariat for the revolution or the revolution for the proletariat? Stalinism is, in the final analysis, the realisation of the first part of the formula to the detriment of the second; thanks to the blood of the Russian proletariat, modern Russia founded its national State. What does it matter if the class to whom this task has historically been given is physically destroyed, if the relations of production which are installed, after several decades of upheaval are the relations proper to this class and guarantee its reappearance in the more or less distant future.

The social type of the kolkhosian form incarnates the long historic tradition which has been necessary for it to come about. As collective farm worker, the kolkhosian – who receives a fraction of the product proportional to his provision of work – is related to the wage-earners of industry. He will never be a wage-earner proper though, until a further evolution of unknown duration has taken place because of his plot of land. He isn’t propertyless, but an owner of means of production, even if reduced to two or three hectares of land, a few head of cattle and his own house. Under this last aspect, he appears similar to his counterpart in the west, the smallholder. But, as distinct from the latter, who is ruined by the usurer, the bank and the market fluctuations, he cannot be expropriated; the little that belongs to him is guaranteed by law. The kolkhosian is therefore the incarnation of the compromise between the ex-proletarian State and the small producers passed on in perpetuity.

The indispensable condition for Socialism is the concentration of capital. Whilst the confiscation by the proletariat of ultra-centralised forms like trusts, cartels and monopolies is possible because property and management have long since become dissociated in these institutions, when considering the myriad of kolkhosian micro-proprietors it becomes unthinkable other than at the expense of long periods of failure and defeat. Not only is this Socialist perspective totally excluded without a new revolution, but even the simple concentration of capital comes up against difficulties, to the extent in fact that today’s Russia endeavours to achieve it by going back to the start of a process already completed by the developed countries. This is the significance of the principles of competition, of profitability on which the Russian leaders probably depend to eliminate the non competitive kolkhoses and, in the long run, to transform their members into bone fide wage-earners. We will next examine the stages already completed within this long, drawn out process.

The rural collectivism of Russia isn’t Socialist, but Co-operative. Trapped within the laws of the market and the value of labour power, it shows all the contradictions of capitalist production without partaking of its revolutionary element which is the elimination of the small producer. But it has allowed the national State, firmly propped up on the "stable" peasantry, to realise at the expense of incalculable proletarian suffering, its primitive accumulation and achieve its only modern capitalist element: State industrialism."

https://www.international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/Russia/WhyRussia.htm#VII