By October 1919, the soviet republic in Russia was approaching its second anniversary. Since 1917, the Russian workers had taken the first steps towards communism. This remains one of the most extraordinary periods in human history. For the first time – in a country covering one sixth of the Earth’s surface – the capitalists and large landowners were expropriated. The economy was nationalised and placed under the control of the workers' state.
But communism was still far from being reached. In a short article celebrating this landmark anniversary, Lenin lays out what can be learned from those two years about how the class struggle, although not immediately abolished, is modified in the transition period to communism after the workers have conquered power. That article was titled, Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Russia faced uniquely difficult circumstances. At the time of the revolution, it was a semi-feudal country. The majority of the population were poor peasants, living in backward rural conditions.
On top of that, the day after taking power, the Bolsheviks faced brutal imperialist interventions and civil war.
Disgracefully, the reformist leaders of the Second International provided their services to the camp of imperialism in their attempts to discredit the Bolsheviks. Kautsky led the chants by accusing the Bolsheviks of violating democracy [read our last instalment of Lenin in a Year on The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky].
These accusations could not have been further from the truth. In response to these lies, Lenin wrote:
“Never in the world has there been a state which has done so much to remove the actual inequality, the actual lack of freedom from which the working peasant has been suffering for centuries. But we shall never recognise equality with the peasant profiteer, just as we do not recognise “equality” between the exploiter and the exploited, between the sated and the hungry, nor the “freedom” for the former to rob the latter.
“And those educated people who refuse to recognise this difference we shall treat as whiteguards, even though they may call themselves democrats, socialists, internationalists, Kautskys, Chernovs, or Martovs.”
Lenin pointed out that these reformist leaders had not understood the historical task that arose from the period of economic transition between capitalism and communism. The fact was that, although defeated, the old capitalists and landlords were still there. Their resistance was enormous.
At the same time, the basis for capitalist restoration continued to exist in the small commodity production of the peasantry, which could not be abolished overnight. The class struggle had not been done away with, it had merely been modified.
But for the reformists, the task was one of reconciling the two systems, rather than leading the struggle of one against the other. The petty bourgeoisie would do everything they could to avoid class struggle, and smooth its sharp edges.
At the end of the day, they did not see it as their task to overthrow capitalism, let alone to fight for communism. They were thus blind to the tasks of the period of transition from one to the other.
Objective conditions for socialism
Socialism requires a high level of development of the productive forces, advanced technology and large-scale industry. It also necessitates an educated working class that has the time, skills, and knowledge to control, plan, and run the economy.
The objective conditions in Russia made it impossible to achieve socialism immediately after taking power. Pockets of advanced, large-scale industry existed in the cities. But the large majority of the population were peasants, ploughing their fields according to methods used since time immemorial in order to produce small quantities of commodities for the market. The general level of the productive forces in Russia was far too low to even produce enough for everyone's needs. As Marx wrote, “where want is generalised all the old crap revives.”
It was clear that Russia was traversing a transitional period with combined features and properties of both capitalism and socialism. Lenin stated:
"This transition period has to be a period of struggle between dying capitalism and nascent communism—or, in other words, between capitalism which has been defeated but not destroyed and communism which has been born but is still very feeble."
The immediate task of the workers' state was therefore to build up the productive forces to the point where class antagonisms (and with it, the state and commodity exchange) could begin to wither away.
Classes did not disappear after the revolution. The three main classes remained: the working class, the capitalists, and the petty bourgeoisie, which mainly consisted of peasants. However, the classes and the relationships between them had undergone changes.
It was crucial for the Russian workers to win the peasants / Image: public domain
The workers had been an oppressed class under capitalism. But after overthrowing the economic system and conquering power, the Russian working class had become the new ruling class.
The capitalist class and the landowners, for their part, continued to exist and still had a powerful base. They retained certain means of production, numerous links with international capital, money, social connections, and a cultural level and understanding of the art of statecraft imparted by centuries in power. Lenin understood that they would try to reclaim what they had lost.
The third class was the peasants, who, due to their position in society as small commodity producers, could swing between the influence of the workers and the capitalists. It was crucial for the Russian workers to win the peasants – especially the poor, working peasants – over to the side of the revolution.
Lenin explained that the class struggle did not disappear in the transition to communism; it merely changed its form.
Alongside each other in Russia, there existed the embryo of communism on the one hand – workers, united by communist principles, upheld by the workers’ state – and on the other, engaged in a struggle against it, the remnants of capitalism, but also the petty commodity production of the peasants, which in some ways necessitated a much more pernicious and difficult struggle.
The same fundamental classes exist in all capitalist societies: the proletarians, the capitalists, and the petty bourgeoisie, an intermediate class of small proprietors between the two.
After a successful socialist revolution, the workers of the advanced capitalist countries could use the enormous productive potential to induce the petty bourgeoisie to form cooperatives and take their place in a national plan of production.
But in Russia, the workers’ state lacked the material means (tractors, fertilisers, cheap consumer goods, etc.) to induce the peasants to give up their little plots of land. Meanwhile, the peasants represented a large majority of the population, whereas in the West it was the proletariat that represented the decisive majority.
On the other hand, the backs of the capitalists had quickly been broken. Within the first few months of the October Revolution, the capitalist owners of factories, joint-stock companies, banks, and railways were expropriated without compensation. There was a transition from workers' control to workers' management of factories and railways.
The landlord aristocracy was also broken through the workers’ alliance with the peasants. The slogan ‘land to the peasants!’ was implemented immediately. On the first day of the new workers' state, the land was nationalised and the property of the large landowners was redistributed by the peasants. Hired labour was prohibited, and poor peasants were freed from the burden of debt and mortgages.
The Bolsheviks made genuine attempts to win over the peasant masses to the revolution. In fact, Lenin commented that they gained the most from the revolution in its first few months!
However, as a class they tended to waver between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It was in the countryside that the basis for capitalist restoration in Russia was most deeply rooted. Farming operated on the basis of petty commodity production. This posed dangers, as it allowed a layer of peasants to enrich themselves by hoarding and speculating on grain. Petty commodity production was the soil from which capitalist tendencies would continually spring up anew unless and until it was overcome by communist production in the countryside.
Lenin's tactics in relation to the peasants
The Bolsheviks understood that the transition to communism was only possible if small-scale peasant farming was replaced with large-scale collective farming. However, the peasants were keen to have their own small plots of land to farm. The Bolsheviks, therefore, had to adjust their programme, by allowing the redivision of the land by the peasantry.
Lenin wanted the peasants to draw their own conclusions on how best to farm the land / Image: public domain
Rather than forcing collectivisation, he met the peasants' wishes, recognising the need to go through the experience with them. Lenin wanted the peasants to draw their own conclusions on how best to farm the land and see for themselves that they would benefit from large-scale collectivisation.
Thus, the work related to agriculture progressed at a much slower pace. By 1919, there had been small steps to organise various cooperative societies of small farmers to move away from petty commodity agriculture towards communist agriculture.
The Bolsheviks also began to challenge private trade by developing state-organised distribution of products, especially in the delivery of grain to the cities and industrial products to the countryside. The Bolsheviks had taken power during a deep economic crisis. The world war, immediately followed by civil war, had hit the country hard, causing severe shortages and inflation in the cities. The Bolsheviks fought against private speculation and profiteering by resorting to grain requisitioning and compulsory deliveries of grain at fixed prices.
But, for example, the price of bread was ten times higher if bought privately rather than from the state. This created significant tensions in the countryside itself; between the countryside and the cities; and between the peasants and the workers' state.
In his article, Lenin further explains the contradictory elements of the peasantry as a class. On the one hand, there were the poor peasants, who had more or less worked as slaves for the landowners. They had much more in common with the workers in the cities. It was these layers upon which the soviet state rested to ensure deliveries of grain traded at fixed prices with the cities in the first year of the workers' republic.
Lenin described the “working peasant” as “the comrade and equal of the socialist worker, his most faithful ally, his blood brother in the fight against the yoke of capital”.
Lenin believed it was necessary to bring them together by eliminating the distinction between the working class in the factories and the working peasants in the countryside. Equally important was the need to separate the poor working peasants from the peasant owners, who exploited hunger, shortages, and inflation for their own gain. He said “that peasant is a profiteer, an ally of the capitalist, a class enemy of the worker, an exploiter”.
To that end, in 1918 and 1919, ‘poor peasants committees’ were established all over Russia, and given preferential trade terms with the cities. This was a means to cement the union between proletarians in the city and country, and to carry the struggle against capitalist tendencies into the countryside.
Socialism today
Lenin knew that socialism was impossible unless the revolution successfully spread internationally. What was required was to develop the economy to take decisive steps forward, to deal with the shortages, to develop the industries, and to train up workers to govern and run the society for and by themselves.
If there had been a successful revolution in an industrialised country like Germany, it would have changed the course of history. Unfortunately the opportunities for a successful world revolutions were not seized, and the Soviet Union would never surpass this transitional economic period.
A transition towards socialism was only possible with the workers in power worldwide / Image: public domain
Despite the later boasting of the Stalinists of having built ‘socialism in one country’, and that the lower stage of communism had been reached – which contrasted like night and day with the sober assessment of Lenin – the class struggle had not been resolved once and for all. Russia remained a transitional society between capitalism and socialism.
A transition towards socialism was only possible with the workers in power worldwide. Lenin fought for this his whole life. Without this (and the Stalinists abandoned this perspective), a transition back to capitalism was the only possible result. That is precisely what took place.
The objective conditions for socialism today have never been better. The working class has never been stronger, more cultured or more connected. Small commodity producers have been crushed by the onward development of capitalism in the advanced countries. They represent a shrinking minority across the rest of the world. Today, we also have the advantage of the rich lessons of the Russian revolution and the first years of the workers state to rely on, which are brilliantly summed up in Lenin’s writings, including in gems like Economics And Politics In The Era Of The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat.
But what Lenin's article teaches us is that the work is far from over after the revolution. With the conquest of power, the real task begins and can only be completed when the entire world has dismantled the capitalist system and implemented communism.
Next time in our Lenin in a Year series, Lenin turns his attention to the important task of spreading the world revolution in The Third International and its Place in History.