Leon
Trotsky: Soviets in America?
August
17, 1934
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 517-527]
“Don’t
you think our NRA is laying the groundwork for your kind of soviets?”
Coming
from Cooper, the question struck Troshin as strange. The ship was
rolling hard, and Troshin was not at all in his best spirits. The
almost imperceptible irony in Cooper’s voice annoyed him a little,
and he replied with some irritation, “When you decide to go in for
soviets, I advise you to work out your own standards for them; ours
won’t suit you.”
They
were both engineers, and there was a bond between them, if not of
friendship then of amicable relations that went back to the time
during the war when Troshin, a true-born Muscovite, worked in
factories in Chicago as an emigrant. Cooper, of pure Yankee stock,
was already in his fourth year of Soviet service. Now both were en
route to America as members of a trade commission. Each respected the
other’s knowledge, experience, arid talent, but each also saw the
other’s faults. To Cooper, Troshin appeared to be a technological
dreamer and a bit of a dilettante:
to
Troshin. Cooper seemed a hidebound empiricist. They argued often but
never ventured into the sphere of politics, partly Out of tact,
partly out of caution. During the first three days of their ocean
voyage their conversations flowed along the customary channels. When
they were not trading shipboard impressions, they discussed the
orders they would soon be placing in America. Cooper for the
hundred-and-first time accused Troshin of a barbaric passion for
“gigantism,” while Troshin retorted in the same vein that the
wings of the American technological mind had been neatly clipped by
the crisis. Only on the fourth day, after he finished reading a book
on the NRA that he had taken along for the trip, did Cooper ask the
unexpected question about soviets in America. Perhaps the nearness of
his native shores loosened his tongue.
“American
soviets,” Troshin continued a little more amiably, “will differ
from the Russian soviets as much as the United States of Roosevelt
differs from the Russia of Nicholas II. Of course, that’s if you
will grant me the assumption that soviets will someday spring up in
America.”
“Suppose
we make such a fantastic assumption. How do you envisage the rise of
soviets among us? What would they look like? And how are we Yankees —
me, for example — going to be comfortable on this Procrustean bed?”
“Soviet
America can only come into being the way America became independent
and democratic — through revolution. Quite a lot of crockery will
get broken in the process; that’s the American temperament. I
think, Cooper, that you yourself would participate in the fight very
energetically, although I’m not quite sure on which side.”
“Is
that unbelievably presumptuous remark supposed to mean that you think
I have no principles?”
“Oh,
why put it so harshly — you naturally consider yourself a staunch
individualist. But the enormous energy you put into your work in
Soviet industry — I won’t say anything about your talent — was
that of a sportsman, not a specialist. (I won’t rub it in by
calling you an enthusiast.) Who can tell what tricks your temperament
and your empiricism will play when great events break? One thing is
certain: you’ll be smashing dishes along with the rest.
“But
the overhead costs of your revolution will be totally insignificant
compared with ours, at least in percentages if not in absolute terms.
You look surprised? After all, my friend, civil wars aren’t fought
by the top 5 or 10 percent who control 90 percent of the national
wealth; there aren’t enough of them, and besides, they love their
comfort too much. The counterrevolution can only raise its army from
the lower middle class. But your farmers and your small shopkeepers
in the cities would support the revolution too if it could show them
the way out of their problems. The present crisis has brought
terrible devastation to all the intermediate layers. It has dealt a
crushing blow to farming, which was already in trouble for a decade
before. You can hardly expect serious political resistance to the
revolution on the part of these classes who, unfortunately, have
nothing to lose. Of course that’s assuming that the new regime
would adopt a sensible and farsighted economic policy toward them.
“Once
the soviet government was firmly in possession of the commanding
heights of the economy — the banks, the basic branches of industry,
transport — it would give the farmers and the small manufacturers
and traders plenty of time to think things over and come to a
decision. The rest would depend on the successes of the nationalized
industry. And here, Cooper, I expect real miracles from you.
‘Technocracy’ can become a reality only under a soviet regime,
when the barriers of private property are removed. The most daring
proposals of the Hoover commission for standardization and
rationalization will seem childish compared with the new
possibilities. National industry would be organized on the model of
the assembly-line system; that is, planning would be extended from
the individual factory level to the economy as a whole.
“You
could cut production costs in half or even to a fifth of what they
are now. There would be a big and rapid increase in the purchasing
power of the farmer’s dollar. That would be enough for a start. But
the soviets would also create their own model agricultural
enterprises on a gigantic scale, as schools of voluntary
collectivization. Your farmers are excellent calculators, if not
statisticians. In time they would see how the accounts balance out:
whether to remain as an isolated link or to join the public chain.
“At
the same time, the soviets would make plenty of room in their
industrial plan for all the viable medium-sized and small businesses.
The government, the local soviets, and the cooperatives would make
sure they got a guaranteed quota of orders, the credit they needed,
and raw materials. Gradually, and without any compulsion, they would
be drawn into the orbit of the socialized economy.
“In
the United States it will be possible to fully apply those
educational methods for influencing the middle classes that proved to
be beyond the reach of the soviets of our backward country with its
semi-pauperized and illiterate peasant majority. I don’t have to
explain the benefits that would flow from that: your development will
be smoother, the overhead costs of social conflict would be reduced,
and the tempo of cultural growth increased.”
“Aren’t
you forgetting how religious we Anglo-Saxons are? That’s the most
important bulwark of social conservatism.”
“Look,
Cooper, you can’t talk about doing anything on the basis of
mutually contradictory assumptions. If we are going to talk about
what American soviets would be like, you have to start from the
assumption that the pressure of the social crisis will prove to be
more powerful than all the psychological brakes. This has been
demonstrated more than once in history. Some of the brakes will be
burned out quickly; others will be reshaped to fit new circumstances.
Don’t forget that the Gospels themselves contain some pretty
explosive maxims.”
“And
what would you do, I’d like to know, with the big shots of our
capitalist world?”
“I
would trust to your inventiveness, Cooper. It may well be that you
would give those who refuse to make their peace with the new system a
picturesque island somewhere, with lifelong pension payments, and let
them live there as they wished.”
“You’re
awfully generous, Troshin!”
“It’s
my weakness, Cooper.”
“But
you don’t seem to take into account the possibility of military
intervention. That could certainly lead to a big increase in the
‘overhead costs’ of a soviet revolution.
“Or
do you imagine, maybe, my optimistic friend, that Japan, Great
Britain, and the other capitalist countries would sit quietly by and
accept a soviet overturn in America?”
“What
else could they do, Cooper? The United States is the most powerful
fortress of capitalism. Once you grant, at least in theory, such a
deepening of the social crisis as would be needed for the
establishment of soviets in the United States, then you have to grant
that similar processes would be taking place in other countries as
well. In all probability semi-feudal Japan would drop out of the
ranks of world capitalism even before the establishment of soviets in
America. The same prognosis has to be extended to Great Britain —
but in any case the idea of sending His British Majesty’s fleet
against a soviet America would be crazy. As for the idea of landing
an expeditionary force on the southern half of the continent? It
would be a hopeless undertaking and would never become more than a
second-rate military escapade.
“Within
a few months, or maybe even weeks, after you established a soviet
regime — think about this, Cooper — the governments of Central
and South America would be pulled into your federation like iron
filings to a magnet. The same with Canada. The movements of the
masses in these countries would be so irresistible they would
accomplish this great unifying process in short order and with
insignificant sacrifices. I’m ready to bet that the first
anniversary of the inception of the first American soviet would find
your hemisphere transformed into the Soviet United States of North,
Central, and South America. Then you’d see the realization of the
Monroe Doctrine, although not the way it was foreseen by its author.
You’d have to move your capital to Panama.”
“Is
that so? But you haven’t answered my question about Roosevelt. Is
he laying the groundwork for soviets, or not?” “You’re more
perceptive than to ask a question like that, Cooper. The NRA is aimed
at overcoming difficulties. It’s supposed to strengthen the
foundations of the capitalist system, not destroy them. Your Blue
Eagle isn’t going to give birth to soviets. On the contrary, it
will be the difficulties the bird is too weak to overcome which will
do that. Even the most ‘leftist’ of the professors in your Brain
Trust aren’t revolutionists; they’re only frightened
conservatives. Your president abhors ‘systems’ and
‘generalities.’ But a soviet government is the greatest of all
possible systems, a gigantic generality in action.”
“Pretty
good. So far you’ve managed to happily transform the whole
character of the New World from Alaska to Cape Horn; you’ve
guaranteed our international security, and changed the location of
our capital.
“Before
I thank you for this labor of Hercules, I would like to know what
will happen to me, engineer Cooper.
“I
just happen to be accustomed to roast beef, a cigar, and my own car.
When you get done with all this am I going to end up on famine
rations, having to wear mismatched shoes that don’t fit, read
monotonous stereotyped propaganda in the one newspaper mat will be
left, elect hand-picked candidates in soviets chosen at the top,
rubber-stamp decisions made without my participation, keep my real
thoughts to myself, and sing praises every day to the Leader fate has
sent me, from fear of being arrested and shipped off somewhere? If
that’s what you have in mind, I’m telling you now you can have my
ticket to paradise. I’ll take my chances on one of those islands in
the Pacific you’ve been so kind as to set aside for the dying race
of individualists.” “Don’t be in such a rush to take refuge on
an island, Cooper. You’d die of boredom there. How could you end up
on famine rations when you eat the way you do today despite
the fact that your system has been compelled to artificially restrict
the area under cultivation and the scope of production? For almost
two decades now, we in Russia have had to build the basic branches of
industry almost from scratch. In your America the problem is just the
opposite. The powerful technological resources already exist, but
they stand paralyzed by the crisis and clamor to be put to use.
“Our
continuing successes in laying the foundations of a planned economy
have been made at the expense of the day-to-day consumption of the
masses. Your problem, on the contrary, is to plan the revival of an
already existing economy, and this must take the rapid growth of
consumption by the people as the point of departure from the very
beginning. Nowhere else has the study of the internal market been
carried so far as in the United States. This has been done by your
banks, trusts, individual businessmen, merchants, traveling salesmen,
and farmers. A soviet government would begin by doing away with trade
secrets; it would combine and generalize the capitalist methods of
calculation, transforming them into methods of overall economic
accounting and planning.
“On
the other hand, your sophisticated and critical consumers wouldn’t
tolerate any sign of indifference toward their needs. A flexible
system for serving the needs of the population would be guaranteed by
a combination of democratically controlled cooperatives, a network of
state stores, and private trade outlets. Don’t worry about your
roast beef, Cooper. You’ll get it whenever you want.”
“After
I get three different bureaucrats to approve my requisition?”
“No,
you’ll use hard cash. The dollar, you see, will be the basic
regulator of this soviet economy. It’s a big mistake to see the use
of money as incompatible with a planned economy. ‘Managed money’
— if your radical professors will forgive me — is an academic
fiction. Arbitrary changes of currency value inevitably lead to the
disruption of internal coordination in all branches of the economy.
This kind of dislocation, being molecular in character, deforms the
most profound, the innermost processes in production and
distribution.”
“But
in the Soviet Union — !”
“Unfortunately
with us a bitter necessity has been converted into an official
virtue. The lack of a stable gold ruble is an important cause of the
many troubles and weaknesses of our economy. Without a stable
currency, how can you even think of really regulating wages, the
prices of basic necessities, and quality control? An unstable ruble
in a planned economy is like having different-sized molds for the
same part in assembly-line production.
“Of
course, after the socialist regime becomes experienced enough to keep
the economy in balance through administrative technique alone, money
will lose its meaning as an economic regulator. Then money will
become simply coupons, like bus or theater tickets. As social wealth
grows the need for these coupons will also disappear. You won’t
have to control individual consumption when there is more than enough
of everything for everybody. America will certainly reach that level
before any other country does.
“But
you can’t get to the stage of a moneyless economy without first
assuring the dynamic equilibrium and harmonious growth of all social
functions. That’s a big job and it can’t be done solely through
administrative pressure and radio pep talks. In its initial stages —
that is, for a certain number of years — the planned economy needs
a stable currency even more than liberal capitalism did. Trying to
regulate the economy by meddling with the currency is like trying to
lift both feet off the ground at the same time — ”
“Troshin,
are you making insinuations about our monetary policy?”
“I’m
not making any insinuations. I’m only saying that soviet America
Will have a big enough gold reserve to ensure a stable dollar. What a
priceless asset, Cooper. You know that our economy pas been growing
at 20 to 30 percent a year. But you also know\about the weak side of
this unprecedented growth rate: The real economic growth does not
correspond to the figures given for gains in production and
technology. One reason for that disproportion is the subjective
administrative manipulation of our monetary system. You’ll be
spared that evil. The American soviet dollar will be running on all
eight cylinders. Your growth rate will greatly surpass ours, not only
in technical output but in real economic advances. What the result
would be is obvious: living standards of your population, and
therefore their cultural level too, would leap ahead at a very rapid
rate.”
“Troshin,
if you’re trying to entice me by the joyful prospect of owning
three or four pairs of standardized prints, all either too big or too
small, and a compulsory set of the complete works of William Z.
Foster — ”
“Cooper,
you can’t take your eyes off the unhappy plight of our mass
consumer. Do you expect me to deny it? I’ve already told you the
reasons for the scarcity and poor quality of our consumer goods: the
inheritance of poverty from the old regime, the low cultural level of
the peasantry, the need to create the means of production at the
expense of current consumption, chronic monetary inflation, and last
but not least, bureaucratism.”
“Monstrous
bureaucratism, you mean, Troshin.”
“Yes,
monstrous bureaucratism, Cooper. But you are not obliged to repeat
it. Among us, the scarcity of basic necessities produces a struggle
of each against all for an extra pound of bread or yard of cloth. The
bureaucracy steps forward in the guise of peacemaker and all-powerful
arbiter. But you are immeasurably wealthier and could assure the
country all the necessities without much difficulty. The needs,
tastes, and habits of your people would never permit a bureaucracy to
gain uncontrolled power of decision over the national income. The
task of organizing a socialized economy for the best satisfaction of
human needs would stir your entire population to its depths, and give
rise within it to the formation of new tendencies and parties,
intensely struggling with one another — ”
“You’re
a poor Bolshevik, Troshin. You talk about struggles between parties
under the soviet regime. The nearness of capitalist shores is having
a harmful effect on you. You’re degenerating before my very eyes.
Which are you for — democracy or dictatorship?”
“I’m
for soviet democracy, Cooper. Soviets are a very flexible form of
government. That is one of their advantages. But precisely because of
that, soviets can’t achieve miracles; they only reflect the
pressure of the social milieu they exist in. The bureaucratization of
our soviets, as a result of the political monopoly of a single party,
which was moreover reduced to a bureaucratic apparatus, was itself
the result of the exceptional difficulties of socialist pioneering in
a poor and backward country. The bureaucratization of the regime
further reacts disastrously on our economy, our literature, our art,
our entire culture. As I see the American soviets, they will be
full-blooded and vigorous. Dictatorship? Of course, defenders of the
capitalist regime will find no place for themselves inside the
soviets. I confess that I can’t imagine Henry Ford as the president
of the Detroit soviet. But a wide-ranging struggle between various
interests, programs, and groupings is not only possible but
inevitable on the basis of a soviet regime. One-year, five-year,
ten-year economic plans; national education systems; the construction
of great transport lines; the transformation of the farms; the
problem of sharing the highest technological and cultural
achievements with South America; the problem of probing outer space;
eugenics — all of these tasks will give rise to competing doctrines
and schools of thought, electoral struggles in the soviets, and
passionate debate in the newspapers and at public meetings.”
“This
smacks of freedom of the press, Troshin. Watch out!”
“Cooper,
do you really think that the monopolization of the press in the USSR
by the top ranks of the bureaucracy is the norm for a workers’
state? No. Regardless of what historical conditions may have produced
it, it is only a temporary deformity.”
“But
even in the United States, if you put all the printing plants, all
the paper mills, and all the means of distribution in the hands of
the state, that would automatically place the whole press in the
hands of the government. Do you suppose the government wouldn’t use
it to promote the dogma of its own infallibility?”
“The
nationalization of the mass media would be a purely negative measure.
The only reason for it is to prevent private capital from deciding
what can be printed: progressive or reactionary, ‘wet’ of ‘dry,’
puritanical or pornographic. Your soviets will have to find a new
solution for the question of how to apportion the socialized printing
facilities and what to use them for. One starting point could be
proportional representation on the basis of votes received in the
soviet elections. The right of each group of citizens to use the
printing equipment would depend on their numerical strength. You
could use the same principle for allocating the use of meeting halls,
radio time, and so on. This way the management and editorial policy
of publications would be decided by groups of people with similar
ideas, not by individual bank accounts.
“You
may object that under such a system every new ideological tendency or
new philosophical or aesthetic school that doesn’t yet have a large
following will be denied access to the press. There is some point to
this argument. But it only implies that under any regime a new idea
has to prove its right to existence. In any case, under a soviet
regime this would be easier than it is now. A rich soviet America
would be able to set aside vast funds for research, inventions,
discoveries, and experiments in all spheres of human creativeness,
both material and spiritual. You won’t neglect your bold architects
and sculptors, your unconventional poets and audacious philosophers.
“In
fact, I’ll admit, Cooper, that I think the Yankees of the coming
epoch are going to have something new to say in those very areas
where until recently they have been the pupils of Europe. The four
years I spent in your country, mainly in the factories, weren’t
wasted, if only because they helped me understand what a change your
technology has produced in the fate of the human race. I have nothing
but scorn for that phony superior tone used in certain circles in
Europe when they talk about ‘Americanism,’ especially since the
present crisis began. I’ll even go so far as to say that in a
certain sense it was Americanism that marked the final dividing line
between medievalism and the modern history of humanity.
“But
your conquest of nature has been pursued so violently and
passionately that you haven’t taken the time either to modernize
your theoretical methods or to create your own art forms. You grew
and became rich according to the laws of the simple syllogism. Your
old puritanism has fermented in a giant vat of material successes, to
produce a religion of practical rationalism. Because of this you have
remained hostile to Hegel, Marx, and even Darwin. Are you surprised,
Cooper? Yet, the burning of Darwin’s works by the Baptist preachers
of Tennessee is only a crude reflection of the aversion of the
majority of Americans for the doctrine of evolution. I don’t mean
only religious prejudices, but also your general mental makeup.
Yankee atheists are imbued with rationalism no less than Quakers.
Your rationalism doesn’t even have in it the merciless consistency
of the Cartesians or Jacobins. It is restricted and weakened by your
empiricism and moralism. But this means that your philosophic method
is just that much more antiquated and out of keeping with your
technology and historical possibilities.
“Today
you are really coming face to face for the first time with the kind
of social contradictions that develop unobserved, behind people’s
backs. You conquered nature by means of instruments your genius has
created; but your own instruments have driven you to your knees.
Contrary to all expectation, your unheard-of wealth has given birth
to intolerable misfortunes. This is teaching you the truth that
Aristotle’s syllogism doesn’t apply to the laws of social
development. You have finally entered the school of the dialectic,
and you can’t go back to the methodology of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Don’t be sorry about it, Cooper. There should
be some fine fruit out of the grafting of the dialectic onto the
sturdy trunk of practical American thought. I’m looking forward to
seeing it. In the next decades you are bound to make great
contributions in the sphere of generalized thought, poetry, and the
arts. They will be on the level of your technology — which still
has a long way to go to realize the potential it already contains.
“While
the romantic numskulls of Nazi Germany are dreaming of restoring the
race of the Teutoburg forest in all its pristine purity, or, rather,
its filth, you Americans, after taking possession of your economy and
your culture, will extend the application of genuine scientific
methods to the sphere of the reproduction of human beings as well.
Within a century, out of your melting pot of
races there will come a new human being, the first really worthy of
the name.”
“Are
you seriously betting on that, Troshin?”
“I’m
betting on even more than that: I’ll bet you that in the third year
of soviet rule you will no longer chew gum. Verily I say unto you,
even Andrew Jackson can enter the kingdom of heaven, if his heart but
desire it. And he can’t help desiring it.” “You’re very
generous with our future, Troshin. But I hope you’re not arrogant
enough to think you’ve convinced me. The poet in you has been
ruined by the good engineer. You got rid of the danger of soviet
bureaucratism much too easily — with words. But there’s the
dinner bell Tomorrow I’ll tear you apart. Your famous dialectic
will be plucked like a thicken.”