Leon
Trotsky: Answer to Graef on Collectivization
Published
May 1930
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 2, 1930, New York 1975, p. 216 f.]
Comrade
Graef's article poses a question of the greatest importance, and does
so, in all essentials, in an entirely correct way, in our opinion.
His illustration of how the Stalinists "understand" uneven
development, by the example of the agrarian overpopulation problem,
is presented most convincingly.
But
there is a point on which we disagree with the author. Comrade Graef
deals too lightly with the question of the relations between the rate
of collectivization and the technical-industrial base of present-day
agriculture. It is totally wrong to suppose that it is possible first
to create collective farms and then to supply them with a technical
base. The collective farms will fall apart while waiting for the
technical base, this collapse being accompanied by a ferocious
internal struggle and causing great harm to agriculture, which is to
say, to the entire economy in general as well.
It
is not true, as he claims, that "even the lowest, most primitive
form of collectivization is bound to result in a higher productivity
of labor than that of the individual peasant farm." The whole
question turns, on the one hand, on the extent of collectivization
and, on the other, on the character of the means of production. "It
cannot be otherwise," writes Comrade Graef, "for if it
were, the economic usefulness and progressive nature of the pooling
of resources would then be disproved." But the truth of the
matter is that the whole problem consists in determining the limits
within which
collectivization, at the given
economic
and cultural level, can be "economically useful" or
"progressive."
One
must regard as an obvious misunderstanding Comrade Graef's reference
to the October Revolution as supposedly having first transformed the
organizational superstructure and then moved on to reorganize the
technical and economic base. That the economic base cannot be
reorganized along socialist lines without power having first been
conquered and without the state (the "superstructure")
having first been reorganized is indisputable When the Mensheviks
told us that social conditions were not yet "ripe" for
socialism, we answered: "Conditions are completely ripe for the
seizure of power by the proletariat, and we shall build socialism at
a rate that corresponds to the material resources."
If
conditions in the Soviet village are "ripe" for
collectivization, it is only in the sense of there being no other way
out. That, however, is not enough. At any rate, there are no grounds
whatsoever for rushing headlong from a relative
state
of impasse, which still permits a postponement of the historical
payment due, to the conclusion that the impasse is absolute. It is
necessary to make clear to the peasantry in an open and honest way
what a disproportion there is between the present extent of
collectivization and the material resources available to support it.
The practical steps to be taken follow from this automatically.
We
will not dwell further on this question, since it is analyzed in
other articles in the Biulleten,
particularly in the article "Toward Capitalism or Socialism?"
in this issue
We
hope that the reader will agree with us that in spite of the
indicated error on economic perspectives, Comrade Graef's article
represents a valuable contribution to the discussion of the problem
of collectivization.