Marxist Historians (only) (2022)

Book Review from the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Marxist Historians. By Harvey J. Kaye, Zed Books, 2022

This is an update to a book first published in 1984. It’s a study of an influential group of academic historians, but there are wider lessons to be learned. They were mainly active in the second half of the twentieth century. Kaye’s survey is mainly confined to the following writers and books.

Maurice Dobb in Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946) wrote on the transition from feudalism to capitalism. For Dobb the ‘bourgeois revolution’ of the seventeenth century provided the necessary foundation for the later Industrial Revolution. Dobb emphasised the role of class struggle in this process.

Rodney Hilton focussed on feudalism and the English peasantry. For instance, in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 there emerged a ‘positive class consciousness’ which ‘was initiated from within peasant society.’ Hilton argued that ‘one of the most important if intangible legacies of mediaeval peasants to the modern world is the concept of a freeman, owing no obligation, not even deference, to an overlord’ (Bond Men Made Free, 1973).

Christopher Hill wrote extensively on the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, though probably his best work is Reformation to Industrial Revolution: A Social and Economic History of Britain, 1530-1780, (1969). The English Revolution was ‘the world turned upside down’. In Hill’s account: ‘Levellers called for political democracy, Diggers for communism, Ranters for free love. Others called in question the common law, the Bible, the existence of heaven and hell, God and the devil’ (John Bunyan and the English Revolution, 1979).

Eric Hobsbawm wrote on workers, peasants and world history. Industry and Empire (1969) is a commercially successful social and economic history of Britain from 1750 to the 1960s. His examination of the development of the modern world, what he called ‘the long nineteenth century’, is divided into three phases: The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (1962), The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, (1975), and The Age of Empire, 1875-1914 (1987). These books probably made Hobsbawm Britain’s most famous ‘Marxist’ and historian.

E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963) is one of the biggest selling non-fiction books in Britain. It is still widely used as a school and university textbook. His statement on the role of the historian was Thompson’s contribution to an understanding of class:

‘I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan . . . from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties.’

In William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955) Thompson defended what he called ‘Morrisian-Marxism’. According to Kaye, this is ‘a Marxism transformed by the concerns and values represented in the work of William Morris’. The Poverty of Theory (1978) is Thompson’s attack on the then growing popularity of interpreting Marxism as a form of structuralism.

Kaye pulls together a useful survey of some key Marxist historians and how they grappled with Marxism and history. The trouble was, and remains, their politics. Their collective contribution as historians has been called ‘history from the bottom up’, but their politics can be termed ‘politics from the top down’, and it calls into question their understanding of Marxism. All the above historians were at one time members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

After the suppression of the uprising in Hungary by the Russian military in 1956 all the above resigned from the CPGB – except Hobsbawm and Dobb. Hobsbawm remained in the CPGB until its break-up in 1991. As a cheerleader for the CPGB and the Russian empire, Hobsbawm defended the leading role of the party advocated by Lenin, and dismissed the view that the emancipation of the working class had to be the work of the working class itself – the cornerstone of any Marxian politics. Thompson later tried to justify his CPGB membership by claiming it was part of a ‘Popular Front’ against fascism. But he did not appreciate that his CPGB membership would lend legitimacy to Stalin’s reign of terror. His concern for the lives of ordinary workers did not extend to the working class in Russia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Later in life, after Thompson had joined the Labour Party, he rebuffed an approach by the Socialist Party to discuss ‘Morrisian-Marxism’.

Lew Higgins

Light on Soviet Russia. (1930)

Book Review from the December 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Economic Trends in Soviet Russia.” By A. Yugoff. (George Allen & Unwin.)

The above volume is intended as a broad general outline of affairs in Russia. It affords considerable support to the position maintained by the Socialist Party since the Bolshevik upheaval.

“Soviet Russia,” says the author, in his introduction 

“is a land of economic contrasts and oppositions. In the towns there are huge factories and workshops; in the countryside, a natural economy is still almost exclusively dominant. Huge trusts and syndicates, embracing whole branches of industry and commerce, confront independent home workers and itinerant traders. Theoretically, and as a matter of principle, all the economic life of the country is under State control; whilst in practice currency crises, crises of production, gluts, crises of demand, press hard on one another’s heels, and are renewed ever and again by the spontaneous play of economic forces and by the lack of due proportion between the various branches of economic life.

Furthermore, in latter-day Russia we can see a peculiarly vivid picture of the results of artificially cultivated Socialist economic forms in a country where neither the economic nor the social conditions are ripe for anything of the kind; we can note what a caricature of true Socialism such an enforced ‘Socialism’ must be.

Two conflicting tendencies arc at work in Soviet Russia to-day. One of them has originated out of the new economic and social situation created by the revolution, the overthrow of Tsarism, and the freshly-created possibilities for a rapid unfolding of productive forces alike in industry and agriculture. The other, which Communist policy has artificially introduced into the realm of economic reality acts as a brake upon economic progress, rivets Utopian fetters upon these same productive forces, and gives rise to a pendulum swing from ‘right’ to ‘left,’ and then back to ‘right’ again.”

Yugoff holds that not only is Russia unripe for Socialism, but that the elaborate bureaucratic structure of nationalisation which the Communist rulers have built up, is a barrier to the capitalist development, which is an essential preliminary to the establishment of Socialism. Nationalisation, he points out, is not Socialism; it has been adopted by the most reactionary governments on occasions when it has suited their interests, and does not in itself necessarily constitute economic progress. In this, Yugoff merely repeats what Engels says in his little work, “Socialism ; Utopian and Scientific” (see footnote and text on pp. 83-4-5)); but he shows also the practical bearing of this fact on the Russian situation.

Nationalisation was adopted by the Bolsheviks as a result of the chaos ensuing from the economic collapse in 1916-17, their seizure of power and the civil war. It was an emergency measure and was carried a good deal further than Lenin had suggested as being desirable in his writings just prior to the events of October-November, 1917. (See “Preparing for Revolt.”) Having adopted it as an immediate policy, however, the Bolsheviks proceeded to make the most extravagant claims for it. The collapse of the currency was hailed as the prelude to the final disappearance of money ; the system of compulsory rationing became the first step towards a planned economy. Small wonder then that the partial reversion to normal capitalism, represented by the N.E,P., should have been regretted by a considerable section of the ruling party as a retreat. Yugoff, however, maintains that the logical implications of the N.E.P. have never been carried out, and the reason is not far to seek.

“During the process of nationalisation thousands upon thousands of private property owners were replaced by new hosts of ‘red’ bureaucrats, trust managers and commissaries, who gobbled up all the savings which might otherwise have been made by the expropriation of the expropriators” (p. 99).

The Bolsheviks nationalised thousands of small enterprises whose owners were also their managers; but the new rulers lacked the technical resources necessary to the reconstruction of these enterprises upon a larger and more economical scale. Hence the surplus value extracted from the workers’ labour did not even provide fresh capital for the expansion of industry. It was swallowed up in “administrative expenses.” The motive of private gain remained the only one capable of acting as a stimulus to the accumulation of capital.

The Bolsheviks, in introducing the New Economic Policy, of course, recognised this fact; but having entrenched themselves in the realm of State industry, their parasitic, bureaucratic supporters are loath to surrender to outsiders the privileges which they enjoy. So far from having been smashed, the State in Russia has expanded into an excrescence which stands in the way of further economic development.

Hence the struggle between those who claim to be intent upon “building up Socialism” and the new class of private capitalists who are arising partly in spite of the Bolsheviks’ efforts, but partly also as a result of them.

In order to provide the capital for the expansion of State industry, the old Tsarist expedient of taxing the peasantry is adopted; but carried beyond a certain point, this defeats its own object by checking agricultural accumulation and the growth of food supplies and raw materials. The experiment of State farms, as Yugoff shows, involves inroads upon peasant cultivation which reduce numbers of peasants to beggary and increase the drift to the towns. The increase in the unemployed is greater than the industries of the State can absorb, and the way is thus opened up for private exploiters to embark upon industrial enterprise. Thus, sooner or later, Yugoff argues, the heavy hand of the State upon trade and industry will be relaxed. In the interests of an expanding capitalism, the State monopoly of foreign commerce will be broken down ; but in so far as these measures involve the abolition of the economic basis of the dictatorship, a serious political change is the essential preliminary. Yugoff puts the question : What form is this likely to take?

He sees three possible alternatives. 

“A democratic State authority might be set up; or part of the Communist Party might be transformed into a party of the possessing classes (Thermidor); or, finally, there might be a Bonapartist, or reactionary coup-d’etat. No one can foresee which course development will take. This much, however, is certain, that the party which now rules in the U.S.S.R. is no longer a party of the working class; is not a party which can carry out a policy of socialisation; is not even a party competent to promote in any consistent or enduring fashion the interests of the working class” (pp. 335-6).

Not that Yugoff blames the Communists for their failure to work a miracle. Indeed, his work is, in its way, a masterpiece of scientific method. He sees in the “dictators” the creatures rather than the creators of the present transitional period in Russia from feudalism to capitalism. Even the very illusions, which he credits them with sharing with their followers in the early days of the Revolution, have in Yugoff’s eyes an historical function. Intoxicated with the idea of an impending world Socialist revolution, the workers of Russia accomplished a task which the Russian capitalists were incapable of doing for themselves. They swept the last vestiges of feudalism from Russian society. They assisted the peasants to lay hands upon the land and free themselves “from the burden of high rents, land taxes, and interest on mortgages,” which Yugoff describes as the main historical task of the revolution.

No sooner, however, had the peasants overthrown the old ruling class in the country than a new one began to appear in the towns. This new class grows at the expense both of the peasants and the urban working-class, converting by degrees the former into the latter. Thus, in spite of certain differences, economic history in Russia repeats that of Western Europe.

The temptation to quote Yugoff’s three final chapters at some length is great, but the following brief extract must suffice:

“Behind the Socialist facade the features of a society which, though new, though born out of the revolution, is fundamentally capitalist, are disclosing themselves more plainly day by day; we must do our utmost to dispel the illusion that this revolution is a Socialist one, so that the working class (hitherto deceived) may be enabled to hold at least the second line of its revolutionary position, and may escape being crushed politically and morally as soon as the nature of the masquerade becomes plain to all the world.” (pp. 320-1).

For Yugoff sees quite plainly that the adversaries of Socialism can make good use of the Communist Party’s failure.

“They declare that the failure of nationalisation in Russia is tantamount to the failure of Socialism. . . . They consider that the Russian experiment provides them with a powerful weapon of defence against the struggle of the working class for Socialism” (p. 95).

To thoroughly appreciate Yugoff’s book, however, it is necessary to compare it with others that profess to cover similar ground. Mr. Maurice Dobb’s volume, “Russian Economic Development,” for instance, while more fully detailed, is vitiated by economic inaccuracies, chief of which is the fallacy that Russian development is Socialist. Mr. Farbman’s writings, while illuminating in many particulars, make no attempt to offer an explanation for the effects which he describes. They cannot therefore be classed as scientific. Anatole Baikaloff’s little book, “In the Land of Communist Dictatorship,” remains equally superficial, in spite of the author’s industrious accumulation of data exploding the stories of the Workers’ Paradise.

Yugoff’s book will be far from welcome to so-called reformers, Communist and Labour Party alike, to whom nationalisation is the panacea for working class ills. Miss Ellen Wilkinson, for instance, in the July “Plebs,” finds it somewhat “disturbing.” More important, however, than this, it spikes the guns of reactionaries, Tory and Liberal, who, ever since the introduction of the New Economic Policy, have sedulously paraded the legend that Socialism has failed in Russia. By laying bare the economic forces actually at work the author has stripped the Russian Revolution of its romance and enabled us the better to understand its reality.

Both publishers and translators (Eden and Cedar Paul) are to be congratulated on the results of their efforts,

Eric Boden

Aspect: Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the failure of the European democratic revolutions of 1848 Marx, in exile in England, decided to improve his knowledge of economics or “political economy” as it was called at that time. The first result of this research, mainly at the British Museum was the publication in 1859 of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*. Marx had intended, as he said in the Preface, to examine various aspects of the capitalist economic system and he listed capital, landed property, wage-labour, the State, foreign trade and the world market. In fact before he died in 1883 he had only got as far as capital with the publication of the first volume of his main book in 1867.

The Critique itself only covered the commodity and money, and is much the same as the first three chapters of Capital (though “exchange value” in the one becomes “value” in the other). In fact it too begins, “The wealth of bourgeois society, at first sight, presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities . . .”, but is a good introduction to the labour-time theory of value, especially as applied to money.

Marx emphasises that money is not just a convenient device for facilitating the buying and selling of goods but is also, as he puts it, “an expression of a social relation of production”. Money, in other words, is a sign that the people who use it have a particular form of society; at the very least it tells us that the means for producing wealth are not owned in common and that production is not carried on according to some definite social plan. The regulation of production by money and the market disguises the domination of the means of production by a minority class.

Marx’s theory of money is that where wealth is exchanged one commodity (or, product of labour produced for sale) will eventually emerge as the one which can be exchanged for all other commodities. This commodity, which acts as a measure of the amount of socially necessary labour-time spent on producing all other commodities, is money. Being the measure of value is the money-commodity’s primary function, but it is a role which can only be played by something which itself has a labour-time value by virtue of being the product of socially-necessary labour. Say it takes the same amount of social labour-time to produce an overcoat as an ounce of gold, then we can say that the overcoat (or 4 chairs or 10 books, etc, etc) is worth 1 oz. of gold. This is its price, the expression of its exchange-value in units of the money-commodity. Being a standard of price and a unit of account like this is money’s second role. The units in which prices are expressed are purely conventional. In our example they are units of weight (which is what they originally were, a £ having once been a lb. of silver) but are now special money-units like cents and dollars or roubles and kopecks fixed by governments. These units can still be related, however indirectly, to weights of gold; the American dollar for instance was for a long time defined as l/35th oz. of gold. Finally, money serves as a means of settling debts, what Marx calls a means of payment.

Originally, the money-commodity itself, usually gold or silver, circulated as the currency in the form of coins. Where this is the case, said Marx, the amount of money that is needed depends on the total prices of all the goods and services to be bought and sold (and the total amount of debts to be settled) and, since coins can be used more than once, on how quickly the coins circulate. Marx rejected the Quantity Theory of Money, at least in the form put forward by Hume and Ricardo which made the price level depend on the quantity of the money-commodity rather than vice-versa.

But, Marx went on, “where paper notes are the sole medium of circulation”, i.e. where the currency is composed of paper notes circulating as tokens for the money-commodity, then the situation is reversed: the price level does depend on the quantity of (paper) money. This does not contradict the theory that the amount of real money is determined in the end by the price level. For the basis of the Quantity Theory of paper-money is that only a definite amount of real money is needed so that, if the amount of paper money issued exceeds this, then currency depreciation—and inflation—will result. This is because paper money is worthless in itself and only has value insofar as it represents gold or silver. If the amount of gold or silver to be represented is given, then obviously the more tokens are issued the less amount of gold or silver each will come to represent. Prices rise because in effect the whole standard of price has been altered.

As Marx put it:

Let us assume that £14 million is the amount of gold required for the circulation of commodities and that the State throws 210 million notes each called £1 into circulation: these 210 million would then stand for a total gold worth £14 million. The effect would be the same as if the notes issued by the State were to represent a metal whose value was one-fifteenth that of gold or that each note was intended to represent one-fifteenth of the previous weight of gold. This would have changed nothing but the nomenclature of the standard of prices, which is of course purely conventional, quite irrespective of whether it was brought about directly by a change in the monetary standard or indirectly by an increase in the number of paper notes issued in accordance with a new lower standard. As the name pound-sterling would now indicate one-fifteenth of the previous quantity of gold, all commodity-prices would be fifteen times higher and 210 million pound notes would now be indeed just as necessary as 14 million had previously been. The decrease in the quantity of gold which each individual token of value represented would be proportional to the increased aggregate value of these tokens. The rise of prices would be merely a reaction of the process of circulation, which forcibly placed the tokens of value on a par with the quantity of gold which they are supposed to replace in the sphere of circulation.

That inflation will be the inevitable result of issuing more paper currency that the amount of the money- commodity which would have to circulate if there were no (inconvertible) paper currency was once recognised even by bourgeois economists. It was forgotten under the influence of Keynesian economics and is only now, after over thirty years of non-stop currency depreciation and rising prices, being rediscovered.

The Preface to the Critique contains Marx’s well-known account of his historical method—the materialist conception of history. The structure of a particular society, including the ideas predominant amongst its members, said Marx, was conditioned by how its members were organised with regard to the production of wealth. This, in its turn, was mainly dependent on technology and the level of productivity. As technology changed and productivity increased so social forces were set in motion which eventually led to a change of society. Marx mentioned four main stages through which human society has passed — later known as Asiatic society, chattel-slavery, feudalism and capitalism—and went on to say that the coming social revolution would end in the establishment of Socialism.

Also published with the Critique as with the original 1904 translation is a document called An Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy which is an unfinished and rough draft dealing mainly with the relationship between production, distribution (defined as a person’s share in what has been produced) and consumption. Though translated on its own into English in 1904 it is really the first part of a set of manuscripts known as “Marx’s Grundrisse," which are only now being translated. The Introduction is interesting in that it shows that Marx would have rejected the orthodox Trotskyist description of Russia as a “contradictory combination of a non-capitalist mode of production and a still basically bourgeois mode of distribution” (Mandel).

Actually, “non-capitalist” is too weak a term to convey what the Trotskyists really have in mind. For they consider that as far as the production of wealth is concerned Russia is a classless society. They do not deny that there is a privileged group in Russia but claim that this group is privileged only with regard to the distribution of wealth. To make this point Trotsky called it a “caste” to distinguish it from a class.

True, classes are defined by how groups are related to the use of the means of production rather than by how they stand in relation to the distribution of the products, but the real question is: Could a class-type mode of distribution exist alongside a classless mode of production?

Marx’s answer can be clearly inferred from the following:

The structure of distribution is entirely determined by the structure of production. Distribution itself is a product of production, not only with regard to the content, but also with regard to the form, since the particular mode of men’s participation in production determines the specific form of distribution, the form in which they share in distribution.

And how in fact could a group be privileged with regard to the distribution of the products without being at the same time privileged with regard to their production? For having the power to distribute products to your advantage amounts to being able to decide what should be produced and so to deciding how the means of production should be used — which is precisely what being privileged in relation to production means. The orthodox Trotskyist analysis of Russia is an absurdity and, as the Introduction shows, quite at variance with Marx’s theory of society.

An introduction by Maurice Dobb and two reviews of the work by Engels complete this edition. Dobb, by the way, seems to imply that commodity-production and money were not central to Marx’s conception of capitalism, but this is what you would expect from someone who mistakenly believes that, although money and commodities still exist there, Russia has abolished capitalism and established Socialism. As Marx always made clear, capitalism is the highest form of commodity-production and money-economy while Socialism by establishing democratic social control over production necessarily means the abolition of production for sale and of money.

Adam Buick

* Just republished by Lawrence and Wishart — £1.50.

Marx and Keynes (1972)

Book Review from issue number 2 (1972) of The Western Socialist

Marx & Keynes — The Limits of the Mixed Economy by Paul Mattick. Published by Extending Horizon Books, Boston. Mass. 364 Page, $6 95)

In the last quarter or the 19th Century capitalism went into one of its periodic "recessions,” affecting in different degrees all the world market countries. Unemployment rose to high levels, discontent and riots were rife and many Marxists were hopeful that this would be the end of capitalism and the triumph of socialism.

In Britain it was particularly acute and prolonged. Maurice Dobb in his "Studies in the Development of Capitalism" (1946) wrote of it: "What has become known as the Great Depression, which started in 1873 and, broken by bursts of recovery in 1880 and 1888, continued into the middle nineties." Frederick Engels, in his 1886 Preface to Capital put forward the view that capitalism was in a "permanent and chronic depression" and wondered just how soon the unemployed would "take their fate into their own hands.” In such circumstances, he wrote, surely the voice of Marx ought to be heard. And, indeed, the study of Marxian economics received great encouragement in working class circles. (Incidentally capitalism recovered from that depression without the help of Keynes.)

After the First World War the spread of Marxian ideas continued and, increasingly, political and industrial organizations of workers were looking to Marx for an explanation of crises and depressions. But then the interest in Marxian economics declined. The universities, while taking up to some extent Marx the philosopher, had no time at ail for Marx the economist. The British trade unions, following the lead of the Labor Party, (which had never been Marxist) swallowed whole the new conception that capitalism can be "managed" in such a way as to produce a continually rising standard of living, freedom from crises and a permanently very low level of unemployment. As the man responsible for this change of direction was J. M. Keynes, Marxists cannot afford not to know about Keynes' theories, especially now that, in Britain for example, the six-year rise of unemployment, first under the Labor Government and, since 1970, under the equally Keynesian Tories is bringing the whole body of doctrine into disrepute. Even dedicated Keynesians cannot just shrug off their fiasco of the past six years — production rising by barely 2 per cent a year; registered unemployment up from 383,000 to over a million (with perhaps another 500,000 not registered); and retail prices (including rents) up by 40 per cent.

Mattick's book is a Marxian criticism of Keynesian economics. Chapters 2-10 deal with Marxian economics. chapters 11-17 with the so-called mixed economy and chapters 18-22 with national state capitalism and the backward countries.

Mattick places the falling rate of profit at the center of his version of the Marxian theory of crises and the so-called collapse of capitalism.

Crises break out, he says, when the factors offsetting the latent tendency for the rate of profit to fall (due to the rising organic composition of capital) fail to prevent the rate from actually falling. Capitalism recovers from a crisis, he goes on, because the resulting devaluation of capital assets again raises the rate of profit. Accumulation proceeds until it is again checked, though at a higher level. As Mattick puts it:

“Despite intermittent periods of depression, each upswing brings capital production to a higher point and wider extension than its previous level of development. Capital develops in a manner that may be described as three steps forward and two steps backward. This type of locomotion does not hinder the general advance; it only slows it."

This is a good description of capitalist development, even though Mat- tick has little space for unbalanced growth arising out of the anarchy of capitalist production.

Marx, says Mattick, recognized that there were theoretical limits to capital accumulation. It can be demonstrated mathematically that it is physically impossible for a rising rate of surplus value (s/v) to forever prevent a declining rate of profit (s/c—v) given an ever-rising organic composition (c/v). But although Marx once or twice used the term "collapse" in this context, this is not really a theory of the collapse of capitalism because in practise the point of no accumulation is never likely to be reached. It would presuppose, for a start, a fantastically high degree of capital accumulation, automation and labor productivity (which would mean, as Marx once pointed out. that the price system would break down because commodities would be so cheap that they ought to be given away free). This theory was meant as Marx’s contribution to the problem of the threat of stagnation which had worried classical economists like Adam Smith. Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Marx was pointing out that if this stage was ever reached it would be due to an economic factor like falling profits rather than a natural one like diminishing returns from agriculture.

Mattlck is undoubtedly right in stating that "Marx's theory is not a theory of underconsumption" and in placing profits rather than markets as capitalism's big problem.

Keynes, too, held a theory of capitalist stagnation. He felt that as capital became more and more abundant, the rate of profit (its “efficiency," as he called it) would fall, thus discouraging investment. His policies were meant to combat this state of stagnation towards which "mature" capitalism was tending.

Mattick’s criticism of the theory of Keynesianism is quite good. He points out that all government spending must be financed from the present and future profits of capitalist industry. Government spending to combat slumps would thus be a redistribution of profits from one section of capitalists to another (those who sold to the government or who received government subsidies). It would be a cost which, by maintaining what Mattick calls a "non-profit sector." reduces the overall rate of profit. The limits of Keynesian policies are the profits of private industry. If these are discouraged then more government spending would be needed to avoid the slump and so on, with full national state capitalism as the logical outcome. Since the capitalists do not want this, says Mattlck, they seek to keep government spending within limits.

Mattick does seem to imply that the "state of stagnation" of both Marx and Keynes had begun to appear and that government spending has been consciously undertaken to combat it. This is open to challenge on a number of counts.

First, Marx’s theoretical state of stagnation is nowhere near. Second, government spending has been undertaken not so much to avoid slumps as to provide essential services for the capitalist class as a whole (education. health, defence), though this has Incidentally affected the overall level of production and employment and has been financed out of profits and by inflation. Third, Mattick is saying in effect that Keynesian techniques have saved capitalism, at least temporarily. This is not true because hitherto they have never really been tried properly, except perhaps as inflation to reduce real wages; and the clearest conscious attempt to try them out — the experience of Britain in the present recession — has proved a failure.

Mattick also deals with economic development, the backward countries and Russia. Although he describes Russia as state-capitalist (because it is still based on wage-labor), he views the national state capitalism practised there and in a number of other countries as a quite different social system from Western-type capitalism.

Indeed, he sees it as more advanced and one towards which the West is heading, too, under the ideology of Keynianism. This does not mean that he supports it. National state capitalism. he says, is no solution to the problem of the backward countries, only world socialism is. And Mattick is quite clear that socialism means the end of money, wages, profits, interest, etc.

On a number of points Mattick come quite close to us and wrote for The Western Socialist during the fifties. In fact, parts of chapters 1, 2. and 12 of this book appeared in the WS article ‘Marx and Keynes' Mattick wrote in November-December, 1955. Unfortunately, his book assumes a high level of acquaintance with the theories of both Marx and Keynes which makes it difficult to follow for beginners.

The Outlook for Socialism in Russia (1932)

From the July 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent questions our attitude towards the Russian Bolsheviks on the ground that we are wrong in ruling out the possibility and probability of Socialism developing in Russia from the existing conditions.

A first objection to our correspondent’s view is that it is an illusion to suppose that Socialism can be established nationally. Socialism is not a means of solving national problems of production in industrially backward areas. It is the solution to the international conflict between the working class and the capitalist class.

Our correspondent supports his contention by arguing that

(1) Production is advancing at a phenomenal rate. (2) Soviet capitalism has characteristics of a novel order. (3) The ruthless and sweeping social policies of the Communists must have compelled an interest in social affairs phenomenal for so backward a people.

As evidence, he quotes Michael Farbman’s statement in the “New Republic” (September 16th, 1931), that while “immediately before the world depression, even the United States rate of annual increment was no more than 4 per cent. . . . the rate of annual increment in Soviet Russia in the first two years of the Plan’s operation averaged 24 per cent.”

This argument leaves out of account the initial backwardness of Russian industry. Expressed as a percentage the development from a relatively low level will appear to be very rapid, although the actual amount of the increase is small compared with the productivity of more advanced countries.

During the year following the abandonment of so-called “Military Communism” and the introduction of the new Economic Policy, the rate of increase was 34 per cent., far exceeding anything that has been achieved since (Grinko “Five Year Plan,” p. 34).

The restoration of the pre-war level of production in Russia took ten years, approximate|y. On pp. 35-36 Grinko speaks of “the failure to restore the iron industry to even nearly the pre-war level, and its lagging far behind the growth of machine construction and the general requirements of the national economy,” and “the considerable deficiency of grain production.” According to the “Economic Handbook of Soviet Russia, 1931” (published by the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce), the yield per acre on the collective farms was no higher in 1930 than in 1927, in spite of enormous increases in the total acreage and in the average size of the collective farms, plus machinery, fertilisers, etc. On page 8 we read : ‘‘The progress of agriculture has not been as rapid as that of industry. After having approached in 1926 the pre-war level as far as sown area and production of principal crops are concerned, agriculture failed until this year to show further progress commensurate with the growing demands of industry for agricultural raw materials and of the population for foodstuffs.” Recent reports show that in many industries the 1931 production plans failed to be realised. In view of these facts, we would suggest to our correspondent that it is far too early to speak of Russia having solved the problem of production; nor does this appear feasible apart from foreign aid. Grinko (“Five Year Plan,” p. 117) speaks of “the ever widening stream of technical assistance from the world’s largest industrial concerns.” This assistance is financed, for a profit, by the world's capitalists.

Regarding argument (2), our correspondent asserts as a fact that in Russia “80 per cent. of industry is under centralised control.” He does not quote his authority, but if we accept the statement as correct, he exaggerates its importance. Maurice Dobb, in his "Russian Economic Developments” (p. 337), quotes J. M. Keynes to the effect “that two-thirds of the capital in large-scale undertakings in Britain was in enterprises of a State capitalist character, i.e., enterprises either in State hands or subject to some form of State regulation and control” (Liberal Summer School, July 30th, 1927). No advanced capitalist country is run on the “individualistic” principles so dear to the heart of some early nineteenth century economists and philosophers. The joint-stock companies, the combines and public utility corporations, together with numerous Acts of Parliament, have changed all that. The capitalist class organise to an increasing extent upon collective lines. What, if anything, distinguishes Russian methods is bureaucratism, regarded by many observers as baneful. As Prof. Hoover puts it in his "Economic Life in Soviet Russia” (p. 10)“ The elaborate machinery which is set up to prevent graft is, however, one cause of the immense amount of bureaucracy and red tape which weighs down the entire Soviet economy.” Dobb, also, describes at length this aspect of the situation in his last chapter.

Our correspondent denies that capital in Russia is concentrated in the hands of a capitalist class. “Most of the capital,” he says, “belongs to the State.” What is this State which is “independent” of the property-owning class? He does not tell us, but its essentially capitalist nature was made clear by no less an authority than Lenin. “In view of the cultural and technical backwardness of Russia the solution of the economic problem could not be reached without learning from the capitalists and also using them as advisers, experts, managers, even as independent entrepreneurs ” (quoted by Dobb on p. 162).

In Russia, embryo capitalists (euphemistically known as “specialists”), receive a State-guaranteed income of 500-600 roubles (£50 to £60) per month. The highest category of workers' wages (including administrators and highly-skilled technicians) is 225 roubles (£22 10s.) per month (Dobb, p. 340). The usual run of workers’ wages at the time Dobb wrote was less than 70 roubles (£7) per month (see Soviet Union Year Book, 1930, pp. 464-5).

Commenting on the incentives held out to specialists in Russia to run production, Prof. Hoover says (p. 8):—

   These material advantages (better living quarters, opportunity for travel, use of cars, clubs, etc.) are better than those which accrue to the mass of the population and are the best which can be obtained under the circumstances.

Our correspondent discusses these increasing class distinctions as “trivial,” and maintains that their disappearance involves, “a far less drastic change of outlook on the part of the workers” in Russia than elsewhere. We wish we could believe this. But our correspondent provides us with no evidence in support of such a view.

As for argument (3), the vast majority of the population of Russia are still peasants, in spite of industrial development. The attempt to organise them into collective farms has provoked various forms of active. and passive resistance. That of the so-called “kulaks” is too well-known to need emphasis, and our correspondent himself admits it. Even more serious from the standpoint of the Soviet Government, however, is the type of resistance mentioned by the Moscow correspondent of the “New York Times” (November 4th, 1931):—

   Many collective farms and some state farms chose to distribute their surplus grain, fodder and other products among their own workers rather than sell them to the State grain collectors.

The SOCIALIST STANDARD pointed out years ago that the peasants were not Socialists and would not produce for any other motive than their own use or profit except under compulsion. Recent reports in the Press indicate that wholesale arrests of Soviet grain agents have taken place (for “failing to fulfil the Plan”?) and we may expect to hear of further screws loose in the bureaucratic machinery of the Russian State.

Maurice Hindus, in “Humanity Uprooted," points out that the peasants control the bread basket and are the backbone of the Red Army. They do not want Socialism, and are unlikely to want it until it has been established elsewhere. Their “interest in social affairs” shows every sign of taking the form of hostility to the Government which professes to speak in the name of Socialism and whose attempt to i impose it from above has inevitably been a failure from the first. The activities of the Communists in Russia have cleared the way for the development of capitalism.

The workers in Russia or elsewhere cannot emancipate themselves simply by supporting the imposition of political disabilities upon the capitalists. They can do so only by organising consciously and politically as a class for the capture of the powers of government in order to convert the means of life into the common property of all.

For this Russia is yet very far from ripe.

The Stalinist doctrine of “Socialism in Russia Alone” is a fantastic Utopian myth, as harmful in its effects upon the minds of the workers as its kindred chimeras, the Fabians’ “gradualism,” the I.L.P.’s "Socialism In Our Time" — in fact, the entire outfits of opportunist reformers in Western Europe and America. 

Eric Boden