[Pigs On The Wing]

I wanted to start a think-tank style thread about the NEP. Was it justified? Personally, I think that the NEP was needed in order to create the conditions necessary for socialism to triumph. I in no way think that it was a "betrayal to the revolution", as many Stalinists call it. Anyways, I'd like to hear your thoughts on it .

[Potemkin]

I in no way think that it was a "betrayal to the revolution", as many Stalinists call it.

Which Stalinists call it this? Can you name them?

The NEP was introduced by Comrade Lenin himself. Did Lenin "betray the Revolution" by doing so?

[Pigs On The Wing]

Many Stalinists do. My best friend, for example. But that's besides the point, I asked for your thoughts

[JohnRawls]

The NEP was justified from a marxist point of view because transition to communism requires a developed or a severely over developed free market economy. Basically the basis of communism requires a form of a developed market and a developed country which Russian Empire was not after the civil war. It depends how you want to view it though. On the other hand Stalinists would argue that you are giving the means of production back to the capitalist class.

It is a basically a difference of opinion if you can or can not build communism on the bones of monarchy/undeveloped capitalism.

[Pigs On The Wing]

The NEP was justified from a marxist point of view because transition to communism requires a developed or a severely over developed free market economy.

I agree, wholeheartedly. A backwards country like Russia needed capitalism, or else there's nothing for the negation to negate, so to speak.

I think it's necessary to create some form of capitalism, even if it was state capitalism, which some people don't even classify as "real capitalism". I don't think the argument that it was giving the means of production back to the capitalist class is a good one because really the idea was to give it to the state, which, being a workers' state, was giving it to the workers.

[AuRomin]

The NEP was necessary, but in the way that doing surgery on a man shot hundreds of times in the chest is necessary. It is the sad truth that the Russian revolution happened too early. I'm not saying that they should have held off for a little longer and continued to live in poor conditions, but that the attempt was doomed from the start by the lack of capitalist infrastructure in Russia. Even Marx admits that capitalism is good, up until a certain point. Since they didn't have the correct conditions for communism, simulating capitalism was the best way forward, but it happened at the expense of the driving ideals. Once you derail a movement like that, it will likely not be fixed. Also, it didn't do a good enough job of stimulating the economy for the desired result.

Also, I was under the impression that Stalinists were for this.

[Potemkin]

I think it's necessary to create some form of capitalism, even if it was state capitalism, which some people don't even classify as "real capitalism".

In the years immediately following the October Revolution, Lenin gave many speeches and wrote many articles in which he specifically denied that he was trying to build socialism in Russia; he claimed that such a thing was economically and socially impossible, given the economic and social backwards of Russia at that time.

I don't think the argument that it was giving the means of production back to the capitalist class is a good one because really the idea was to give it to the state, which, being a workers' state, was giving it to the workers.

The NEP involved allowing private entrepreneurs to employ people (albeit on a small scale) and to extract profits from the labour power of their employees, with the employers legally owning the means of production. It was not state capitalism. Lenin regarded it as a step backwards in his plan to build state capitalism (and thereby making the building of socialism possible), albeit a necessary step backwards given the utter devastation of Russia in the aftermath of the Civil War.

[fuser]

Stalinist being against NEP is something that I have heard for the first time.

Of course its justified and no one makes a better case for it than Lenin himself : https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm

[Deutschmania]

I think that the Japanese Communist Party chair , Fuwa Tetsuzo , addressed this topic in great depth http://www.jcp.or.jp/english/jps_weekly/2002-0827-fuwa.html .

[Lightman]

The NEP involved allowing private entrepreneurs to employ people (albeit on a small scale) and to extract profits from the labour power of their employees, with the employers legally owning the means of production. It was not state capitalism. Lenin regarded it as a step backwards in his plan to build state capitalism (and thereby making the building of socialism possible), albeit a necessary step backwards given the utter devastation of Russia in the aftermath of the Civil War.

One thing I've always wondered about the NEP - wouldn't knowledge of the character of the USSR's government massively disincentive investment and private entrepreneurship? If you're a would-be capitalist, and you know that the ultimate aim of the government is to nationalize/collectivize all private means of production, why would you be willing to invest time, energy, and money into creating a private enterprise?

[Potemkin]

One thing I've always wondered about the NEP - wouldn't knowledge of the character of the USSR's government massively disincentive investment and private entrepreneurship? If you're a would-be capitalist, and you know that the ultimate aim of the government is to nationalize/collectivize all private means of production, why would you be willing to invest time, energy, and money into creating a private enterprise?

Capitalists thinking in the long term...? Does not compute... does not compute....

[D Z]

Was allowing individuals to enter voluntary contracts and freely produce demanded goods justified? Yes.

[The Immortal Goon]

It was an admission of reality. I hadn't heard of a Stalinist that opposed the idea, though I sort of remembered something from a while back that I found.

In one of Lenin's last works he tells everyone to trust Trotsky's interpretation of the NEP:

Those to whom the question of our New Economic Policy—the only correct policy—is not quite clear, I would refer to the speeches of Comrade Trotsky and my own speech at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International devoted to this question.

Anyway, the almost religious devotion to a personality is dangerous and tends to be counter-productive. The NEP is a kind of proof of that in that Lenin and the others had to look at economic reality, not what they wanted but what it was, and then apply that to their system.

The NEP wasn't particularly popular, and nobody but Lenin could have pushed it through, but the Soviets were in danger of failing.

The precondition was that the working class retained control over the free trade and whatnot. How much this happened after Lenin is up to debate, as was how this was dealt with and should have been dealt with.

Regardless, few communists would say the NEP was a bad thing.

[Truth To Power]

The NEP wasn't particularly popular, and nobody but Lenin could have pushed it through, but the Soviets were in danger of failing.
...
Regardless, few communists would say the NEP was a bad thing.

So only when their own socialist policies have clearly failed are communists willing to try liberty, justice and prosperity as a last resort. Well, I guess there may be hope for them yet!

[The Immortal Goon]

So only when their own socialist policies have clearly failed are communists willing to try liberty, justice and prosperity as a last resort. Well, I guess there may be hope for them yet!

Are you going to respond to the other thread you keep slinking away from after I respond

Also, "liberty, justice, and prosperity" are what the communist wants.

For the liberal like yourself, these things are good enough in theory. The communist demands them in fact.

In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.

[D Z]

Regarding Lenin's quote:

But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation...

Maybe I'm not well-read enough in Marxist theory, but is "exploitation" as it's used here not dependent upon the labor theory of value?

Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy"

I can't remember if I have the right leader, but was it not Gorbachev who traveled to England, saw a grocery store, and innocently asked how Thatcher (?) managed to feed her people? Poverty is a relative term. The absolute improvements in material well-being are highly apparent in market economies. The current state of material well-being compared to pre-industrial revolution or antiquity living standards is certainly not due to improved methods of wealth redistribution...

[The Immortal Goon]

Lenin goes on to explain both of those points. In essence:

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

To contextualize that a bit, Lenin would point out that you theoretically have free speech in the United States. So does Rupert Murdoch. Your freedom of speech is virtually only a theory in comparison. Murdoch has a newspaper, cable channel, network channel, and a lot of other ways to use his freedom of speech.

You do not.

And this goes down for every freedom you are guaranteed. You have them in theory, but not in fact.

[D Z]

And this goes down for every freedom you are guaranteed. You have them in theory, but not in fact.

I don't disagree with the concept of what he's saying, but it does seem a narrow point. It's still an argument about _relative_ ability to achieve desired ends. I have no access to those communicative vehicles, thus my relative free speech has less scale than one with massive wealth. However, I can get get on a bull-horn and shout more loudly, I can get one a telephone and speak with people all over the world, I can get on the internet and do the same. As a standard middle-class guy, I can communicate my thoughts with more people now than any standard middle class guys could have dreamed of 200 years ago, even though others can do it more. Besides, I hardly see how this can be mitigated. The more accessible mass communication (newpapers, tv...etc.) is, the more people will flood that platform to be heard...like tragedy of the commons but with speech.

I also see how this fits with the second point I discussed but not the first about exploitation.

[The Immortal Goon]

It's mitigated by you, and everyone else, gaining control of the means of production for ourselves as a class.

So far as the labour theory of value, I'm not not sure that directly plays into what Lenin is speaking about here, though it would always be somewhere in the background I suppose.

[AuRomin]

TTP, it's also important to remember that the middle class is 1) unstable and declining, and 2) based on the foundation of imperialism. Even though the middle class has it well and was until recently the majority in the US, imperialism spreads the burden to other countries, making the scale to be considered global. It isn't that the proletariat class that Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. wrote and spoke of has dissolved, but just that they are out of sight in other places.