Socialism in a single country?
Dear Editors,
As a newcomer, while supporting the goal of socialism globally, I question your rejection of the idea that it cannot or should not occur in one country beforehand, especially as this appears incompatible with the declared principle of a "speedy termination" of capitalism.
Given that formidable beneficiaries and advocates of capitalism world-wide are united in their determination to maintain their system, attempting to overcome them all simultaneously does not seem the best use of limited resources, nor does it provide a tangible stimulus to the world’s exploited to break free from lifelong restraint.
To use a demolition analogy: it's unnecessary to destroy a dam by exhaustively coating the entire surface with voluminous plastic explosive in order to shatter every part synchronously.
The same result is achievable by concentrating a limited charge in one place, so allowing what is constrained to first break free with such drive that the rest of the barrier steadily wears away in conjunction with an increasing rate of escape.
One nation succeeding through socialism would make the advantages so clear to others, so quickly, that any countermeasures to bolster the international profit system would be swept away by the dynamic surge for the same benefits.
A sufficiently developed nation could go it alone and meet all its needs and requirements through socialism without being isolated from the rest of the world (though even isolation— as duress to reconform—would fail since retaining global ties would be preferable rather than essential).
Any raw materials that had to be imported could be bartered for. And if necessary, by exporting surplus goods, foreign currencies could be obtained for maintaining world-wide communications and transport links etc.
Preserving these international relations would not be a betrayal of socialist values nor an act of reformation. It would be a means to and end. whereby the baby gains protection and its diet is supplemented, while also enabling all to observe it swiftly growing strong, healthy and contented.
Without any financial restraints, wastage of resources and dog-eat-dog disunity, the full benefits of common ownership could be realised throughout the pioneer nation, transforming and improving lives to such an extent that a socialist chain reaction would inevitably be triggered across the planet.
By insisting on simultaneous global socialism, or none at all, time might run out due to capitalism’s destructiveness before the former can be achieved.
Max Hess,
Folkestone, Kent
Reply:
We don't say that socialism should not be established in one country but that it can't be. If it could, then we wouldn't be opposed to this, but it can’t because capitalism is a world system. not just in the sense of being dominated by the operation of world market forces but also in terms of the underlying technical conditions of production and world-wide division of labour which socialism will inherit.
No one country could be self-sufficient not even the most developed country in the world, the United States, nor the largest Russia, nor the most populous, China, nor Japan, nor even a multi-country trading bloc like the Common Market And the idea of any other part of the world going it alone is just ludicrous.
What this means is that no one part of the world can opt out, at least not without suffering a drastic reduction in the amount and variety of goods and services available to satisfy the needs and wants of those living there. People would be deprived of products from other part of the world or would have to work longer and devote more resources than otherwise to producing them.
In these circumstances, even if private property and the profit motive were to be eliminated within its frontiers, the country concerned would hardly provide the attractive model you assume for people in other countries to want to follow.
You say that this drawback could be got round by bartering with the outside, capitalist world, but have you thought this through? The products to be acquired from the outside world would have to be paid for (whether in money or in kind) at the full market price. But these outside products would not be able to be acquired unless some products produced in the country had first been exchanged on the world market. For this to happen they would have to be competitive in terms of quality and price with the same products produced in the capitalist world, otherwise no other country would want to buy or barter for them.
So already, to participate in the world market, the isolated would-be socialist country would have to behave capitalistically, striving to keep labour costs down and so further restricting the already reduced standard of living of the population. As people would be unlikely to agree to this voluntarily a new ruling class to enforce this would be likely to emerge. The end result would be not "socialism in one country" but state capitalism in one country.
There is another point you overlook. Abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism is not like demolishing a dam. It requires the existence of an active and participating socialist majority. Without this there can be no socialism, so for socialism to be attempted in just one country there would have to emerged a socialist majority in just that country. But how likely is this to happen in practice?
We think it is highly unlikely. Given the fact that social conditions and problems are basically the same all over the world, and given that socialism is the idea of a world society where the resources of the Earth belong in common to all humanity, we can see no reason why socialist ideas, when they begin to catch on, should only spread in one particular country and not in others.
In our view it is much more reasonable to assume that socialist ideas will spread more or less evenly in all countries. In which case, apart from being impossible to achieve anyway but the problem of perhaps having to try to establish socialism in one country won’t even arise.
Editors.
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