Abstract
Given the prevailing international relations during the time of armed defense of the revolution, the relative backwardness of production in Russia was the basic reason for the separation of revolutionary politics and the working population and for the reconstitution of politics in a special social sphere. This division was endurable for a period of time as an external necessity dictated by temporary circumstances, given the revolutionary hope that the revolution’s basic human forces — as the true subject of politics — would soon again be able to control events.
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“Above all we must improve general living conditions so that the worker need not chase after a decent job, so that hundreds of thousands — millions — of toilers can attend worker-peasant supervisory school and learn to administer the state (for no one has taught us that), so that we can replace hundreds of thousands of bourgeois bureaucrats.” — V. I. Lenin, in an article published January 29, 1920. Sochineniya (Works), 4 (Moscow, 1955), vol. 31, p. 408. [Apparently not included in the Lenin Collected Works, English tr., Moscow, 1966 — Ed.]
Lenin drafted this preliminary program in 1918. (op. cit., vol. 27, pp. 129–130ff. [Same citation to English ed. — Ed.]
As confirmation of Lenin’s efforts and hopes one notes that the maximal punishment according to the provisions of the penal law reform from the early days of Soviet power was five years, for “under Soviet authority any delinquent may be reformed within a period of five years.” Trotsky certainly spread an illusion when he wrote that according to Lenin the dictatorship of the proletariat would be necessary only a few months. As a realistic upper limit to the existence of the dictatorship he mentioned a period of thirty years, taking into account all the unfavorable Soviet conditions. (See Dr. P. Sager, Die theoretischen Grundlagen des Stalinismus (Verlag Paul Haupt, Bern, 1953), p. 61.
B. N. Ponomarev et al., Istoriya Kommunisticheskoy partii Sovetskogo Soyuza (history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) (Moscow, 1959), p. 269.
Ibid., p. 270.
V. I. Lenin, op. cit., vol 27. [Eng. tr., p. 257 — Ed.]
“The Russian is a bad worker compared with people in advanced countries. It could not be otherwise under the tsarist regime and in view of the persistence of the hangover from serfdom. The task that the Soviet government must set the people in all its scope is — learn to work.” — Lenin, op. cit., vol. 27 [Eng. tr., p. 259 — Ed.]
“However, a certain portion of the workers was not immediately able to accept the new situation, failed to grasp what it means to be a ruling class. In the factories and offices that had become the property of the people such people retained their former attitude to work, tending to avoid difficulties and evade work. They followed the custom of ‘take yours and run’. Such ideas were particularly strong among those workers who came into the factories and offices during the war.” — B. N. Ponomarev et al., op. cit., p. 264.
Istorija SKP (b) — kratki kurs Serbocroat tr. (Kultura, Belgrade, 1948), p. 295. [tr. into English as: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) — Short Course), ed. J. Stalin (International Pub., New York, 1939) p. 248 — Ed.]
Istoriya KPSS, Chapters X, XI, and XII. History of the CPSU (b) — Short Course, Chapters X, XI, and XII.
Istoriya KPSS, p. 371 [History of the CPSU (b) — Short Course, pp. 272–75 — Ed.]
Ibid., p. 282. In accordance with the first five-year plan (1929–1933) planned capital investment reached 64,600 million rubles. Industry (and electrification) absorbed 19,500 million rubles, transport absorbed 10,000 million rubles, and agriculture absorbed 23,200 million rubles. Ibid., p. 296.
Ibid., p. 287. P. Sager mentions that the percentage of the national product accounted for by industry rose from 39.4% to 57.8% between 1928 and 1937, while consumer goods declined from 50.6% to 42.4%. — Sager, op. cit., pp. 80–81.
“As a result of the mistakes of Party organizations and the downright provocateur actions of the class enemy, in the latter half of February 1930, against the general background of the unquestionable success of collectivization, there were dangerous signs of serious discontent among the peasantry in a number of districts. Here and there, the kulaks and their agents even succeeded in inciting the peasants to outright anti-Soviet actions.” — History of the CPSU (b) — Short Course, p. 308.
At the same time sabotage and raids were carried out in industry, mining, etc. Thus for example, in the official party history there is mention of the ‘Shakhty Affair’ (in the Shakhty region of the Donetz coal basin) as the work of “a large organization of wreckers, consisting of bourgeois experts” who blocked up mine shafts, set fire to pits, plants and electric-power stations, destroyed expensive industrial equipment and ventilation apparatus, etc. See Ibid., p. 292; Istoriya KPSS, p. 401.
Istoriya KPSS, p. 400.
History of CPSU (b) — Short Course, p. 298.
Ibid., pp. 275ff., 324–329 and passim.
The viewpoint that state ownership is the highest form of socialist ownership has survived here and there even since Stalin. It may be found, for example, in the work of a group of authors, Osnovy marksistskoy filosofii (Foundations of Marxist Philosophy) (Moscow, 1958), p. 492; and in another jointly written work, Voprossy marksistskoleninskoy filosofii (Questions of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy) (Moscow, 1959), p. 107. [English tr. of both these books were published in Moscow — Ed.]
As early as 1919 Bukharin pleaded for central planning on the following lines: “The Central Statistical Bureau calculates the necessary annual production of boots, trousers, shoe polish, wheat, cloth, etc., then calculates how many comrades must work in the fields, sausage factories, in the great public garment factories — and assigns manpower accordingly…. The needs of society for each year will be calculated in the same way.” — N. I. Bukharin, Das Programm der Kommunisten (Vienna, 1919), p. 14.
“The will of the Party and its leader, Stalin, is the only authoritative one regarding the overall policy and the very organization of the economy.” — H. Jonas, in: Sager, op. cit., p. 80.
J. Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (International Pub., New York, 1952), pp. 7–8.
“It is said that economic laws are elemental in character, that their action is inavertible and that society is powerless against them. That is not true. It is making a fetish of laws, and oneself the slave of laws. It has been demonstrated that society is not powerless against laws, that, having come to know economic laws and relying upon them, society can restrict their sphere of action, utilize them in the interests of society and “harness” them, just as in the case of the forces of nature and their laws…”. — Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., pp. 9–10.
Ibid., p. 11.
“In the Soviet Union wages serve as an instrument of control over the amount of labor and the amount of needs. They express the relation between society as a whole — personified in the socialist state — and the individual worker working for himself, for hissociety” — O. P. Celikova, Sochetanie obshchestvennyh i lichnyh interessov pri socializme (The Harmony of Social and Personal Interests in Socialism) (Moscow, 1957), pp. 41–42.
Because of the scale of the lawlessness, on September 19, 1946, the government of the U.S.S.R. and the Central Committee of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union promulgated a decree entitled “The Abolition of Violations of the Statute on Collective Agriculture in Kolkhozes.” A commentary on that document states that “certain Party and regional government officials have illegally disposed of the property of kolkhozes, forcing the management and presidents of kolkhozes to give them or sell at low prices stock and products that belonged to the kolkhozes. Incidents of this nature have been discovered in Voronezh, Kuibyshev, Irkutsk, and Poltava oblasts and in other oblasts. As published in Pravda on November 15, 1946, mass violation of the Statute was uncovered in Nekous region of Yaroslavl’ oblast. During the period 1944–1945 in 44 kolkhoz regions the following produce was taken away at reduced prices or without compensation: 18 horses, 40 cows, 42 head of sheep and goats, about 9,500 liters of milk, more than 350 kilograms of meat, more than 4 tons of wheat, nearly as much potatotes, and large quantities of hay and other agricultural produce. In the Hohol’ region of Voronezh oblast a number of administrative workers of the region illegally obtained cows and calves from kolkhozes. The illegal expenditure of kolkhoz funds was discovered in the Michurinsk region of Tambov oblast: the president of the regional executive committee and the head of the regional agriculture department illegally disposed of the property of kolkhozes. In 1944 the regional executive committee and the regional agriculture department deprived kolkhozes of 25–300 rubles, money that was to be awarded to leading agricultural workers; in 1946 kolkhozes were deprived of 7,000 rubles intended for motor and tractor stations. “Similar incidents were discovered in other regions.” — From a textbook by a group of authors, Kolhoznoe pravo (Kolkhoz Law) (Moscow: 1947), pp. 241–242.
“Major attention should be devoted in all stages of planning and managing the economy to the most rational and effective utilization of material, human, financial, and natural resources and the elimination of unnecessary expense and waste”. “In developing the national economy extreme care must be taken to ensure proportionality, the control of economic disproportion, assuring sufficient economic reserves in order to maintain a constant high rate of economic development, the unhindered operation of enterprises, and the constant increase in national prosperity.” “In the entire period of the upsurge of Communist construction the state budget retains an important role in the distribution of the gross national product and national income.” — Programme KPSS (Program of the CPSU), pp. 85–9. [No date cited — Ed.] “The principle of distribution according to labor, the only possible principle in socialism, presupposes the necessity of state regulation of distribution among the members of society…” — L. Leontev, Gosudarstvo v period razvernutogo stroitelstva kommunizma (The State in the Period of Developing the Construction of Communism) (Moscow, 1959), p. 14. “Our party has always struggled not only against opportunists who have utilized the thesis of the withering away of the state for negating the necessity of socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat but also against revisionists who have tried to weaken and undermine the socialist state under cover of this thesis.” — A. I. Mikoyan, address to the Twenty-second Congress of the CPSU, Pravda, November 22, 1961.
The word authority (Latin auctoritas) derives from the word author (auctor). An author is someone who “maintains (upholds, soutient) something and develops it,” and authority is the property of an author, or his power “that serves to maintain (uphold) and augment.” Thus the French word for authority (l’autorité) means strength or power (le pouvoir) to impose upon another, to command him. Thus it follows that authority may mean legal power, as the authority of law. See: Paul Foulquié, Dictionnaire de la langue philosophique (Paris, 1962), p. 61.
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Krešić, A. (1979). Political Dictatorship: The Conflict of Politics and Society. In: Marković, M., Petrović, G. (eds) Praxis. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9355-6_7
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