Building Up Socialism/Chapter 3

by Nikolai Bukharin

Chapter III.

MUST CAPITALISM BE REBUILT?

This latter group in general may be described as follows: Socialism, of course, has matured; capitalism has already produced within itself the forces of production which make the question of the Socialist revolution practical politics for to-day; but the war has destroyed everything and now we must adopt a new tone, we cannot now speak of the tasks of the Socialist revolution. The question is presented in this manner by none other than Karl Kautsky who has spoken about the enormous damage caused by the war and about the impossibility of establishing Socialism on the basis of post-war capitalism. Russian Social-Democrats also have presented the question in this manner, for example the well-known Menshevik Lieber. In the preface to his pamphlet "Social Revolution or Social Collapse," published in Kharkov in 1919, after carefully explaining that "unfortunately" he had lost the original manuscript of this pamphlet when he had to flee from the "Communist Okhrana" (Secret Service), he put forward the following arguments:

 

"I advanced the fundamental 'pessimistic' postulates developed in this lecture already in the period of the 'honeymoon' of our revolution. From the very first days of the Russian Revolution the features of its collapse from decay caused by the war were clearly revealed to me and the flitting will o' the wisps did not for a moment appear to me like revolutionary beacons."

 

This, which no doubt was intended to serve as a poetic description, contains the following idea: Why do you Bolsheviks talk about-Socialism, international revolution and such like things? Why do you bring these questions to the front now? What is taking place now is not a process of the revolutionary advancement of society, but a process of collapse from decay caused by the war.

In the third chapter of this pamphlet entitled, "Future Prospects and Tasks" in which is described the "anarchy" resulting of the war, the writer openly states that his point of view applies not only to Russia but may be applied to the whole world: "From what I have said it is clear that Socialism at the present time is impossible of realisation."

It is not difficult to see that this argument follows from the opportunist premise of the "painless" transition of capitalism to Socialism. In complete contradiction to the revolution theory of Marx, which forecasted the birth of Socialism in, the midst of catastrophe ("Zusammenbruchstheorie") inevitably accompanied by the destruction of forces of production, the "critics" start out with the possibility of a truly idyllic progress of events. On the other hand the argument we are examining is linked up with the arithmetical conception of the pre-requisites of Socialist construction: it assumes that any deviation from definite phases in the development of the material basis of production immediately renders the transition to Socialism impossible.

The changing relation of class forces, the education and self-education of the proletariat in the course of its battles, etc., all these things are ignored. It is superfluous to mention that an empirical test of this postulate, i.e., the whole of the subsequent course of events completely refutes the arguments of the opportunists who have simply fled from the solution of the problem in the same way as they fled from the revolution itself.

The third group of objections, which appeared to be the most popular, was presented in the form of a theory which was intended to prove that the proletariat cannot capture power at all, for the reason that it represents an arithmetical minority of the population. The capture of power, dictatorship of the proletariat, capture of power by the political party of the working class, construction of Socialism, transition from capitalist society to Socialist society, all this, according to the Social-Democratic critics, absolutely presupposes that the proletariat is in the majority. This question has been discussed in detail in Bolshevik literature and so there is hardly any need to dwell upon it here. Particularly well-known is the argument used against Kautsky on this question by comrade Lenin: {{dhr}

"The principal cause of the failure of the 'Socialists' [read, petty bourgeois democrats] of the Second International" wrote comrade Lenin, "is their failure to understand that political power in the hands of one class, the proletariat, can and must become an instrument for attracting to its side the non-political toiling masses, an instrument for winning over these masses away from the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties."^[1]

 

A concrete combination of social forces is conceivable in which the proletariat while being in the minority of the population may lead the mass of the petty bourgeoisie. On the other hand it is possible to have an aristocratic degeneration of certain sections of the proletariat, while being in the majority in the country, which would extremely embarrass the proletarian revolution.^[2] Hence, only a stereotyped, vulgar, abstract, undialectical attitude towards the question can lead to the Social-Democratic view that a revolution with the proletariat in the minority is impossible.

A curious variation of the theory of the immaturity of the proletariat is represented by the point of view of A. Bogdanov. As is well-known Bogdanov has a special theory of the ripening of Socialist elements in the womb of capitalist society. According to this theory the working class can take up the task of capturing power for the purpose of Socialist construction only when it has at its command a sufficient number of trained men and is able to solve the most complex tasks of Socialist construction. Bogdanov's argument is fairly simple. He takes up a question like that of the "Plan,"^[3] for example, and says: To draw up a plan of Socialist economy is an extremely complicated task, and if the task is one of organising Socialist society on a world scale, then the difficulties will increase immeasurably. To overcome these difficulties without possessing the necessary cultural-organisational pre-requisites is impossible. In so far as these pre-requisites do not yet exist, it stands to reason that it is impossible to bring forward the question of Socialist construction.

In view of the particularly original position taken up by A. A. Bogdanov we will quote the more characteristic passages in full. On page 38 of his pamphlet "Questions of Socialism," the author writes:

 

"The systematic organisation of human society pre-supposes the generalisation and socialisation of organisational experience and its crystallisation into scientific form. If that is not obtained it follows that the historic conditions for the fulfilment of this task have not yet ripened. It is as impossible as the system of machine production was impossible without the natural and technical sciences generalising and socialising technical experience."

 

And further, on p. 68 he says:

 

"The cultural independence of the proletariat at the present time is a fundamental and undoubted fact which must be honestly admitted and from which the programme for the immediate future must start out. The culture of a class is the combination of its organisational forms and methods. If that is the case, then what malicious irony or childish nonsense are those schemes for immediately imposing upon the proletariat the most radical, most complex and most difficult organisational world transformation in history! And this at a time when before our very eyes the proletariat's own organisations crumble and fall to pieces, frequently not as a result of blows from without."

In a certain sense, not less interesting is the point of view developed at one time by V. Bazarov which is quite close to the position taken by A. Bogdanov. Bazarov starts out from approximately the same premises as does Bogdanov, but he formulates his conclusions much more concretely and distinctly. It is worth while dealing with these conclusions while avoiding the argumentation, the general character of which has just been referred to. This is how they are formulated by the author. Analysing the Western European forms of State capitalism, V. Bazarov draws the the following conclusion:

 

"In view of what has been said above it seems to us absolutely incredible that the Labour Party in the fairly near future will be able to utilise this new form of the bourgeois system as an instrument for the establishment of a genuinely Socialistic planned economy. The only task accessible to it under present conditions is that formulated by the German opportunists, namely, the conversion of the profit-making system of economy 'into a State economic organisation for supplying the needs of the consumer' (Bedarfsdeckungswirtschaft) as is the clumsy designation of this new invention."^[4]

 

Modifying the ideas of the opportunists in the direction of the necessity for this organisation of State capitalism having an international character the author makes the following summary of his views:

 

"We are dealing here with a very extensive and complex organisation, but as this organisation does not break with the principles of coercive bourgeois-democratic politics; as, on the other hand, the general contours of this organisation are already beginning to take shape in the spontaneous processes taking place at the present time, a problem arises before contemporary democracy which, in principle, cannot be regarded as insoluble. On the question as to whether the proletariat will be able to show the required initiative and rally around itself the other democratic elements interested in the solution of the problem mentioned depends the progress of world history in the course of the next few decades or even the next centuries."^[5]

 

In a word, according to this Bazarov's argument about the lack of culture of the worker, we shall thank God if we, following the footsteps of the German opportunists, succeed in maintaining State capitalist organisations dominated by the bourgeois; as for constructing Socialism, it is idle to dream of it! For decades and perhaps for centuries, the proletariat will have to be satisfied with the entertaining occupation of supporting the capitalist system in its most concentrated form.

The Bogdanov-Bazarov "theory" of the cultural-organisational ripening of the proletariat in the lap of capitalist relations is utterly wrong; it contradicts the fundamental facts of the development of the working class and is utterly idealistic. It is wrong because it pre-supposes the possibility of the proletariat—the exploited and economically, politically and culturally oppressed class—"ripening" within the capitalist system sufficiently to be able immediately to undertake the management of the whole of society and to have within its ranks forces able to solve the most complex problems of the period of construction. Bogdanov and Bazarov fail to understand the difference in principle between proletarian and bourgeois revolutions, between the ripening of capitalism within the feudal system and the ripening of Socialism with the capitalist system. In this connection we have written:

 

"Within the capitalist system the proletariat reveals remarkable symptoms of future culture, remarkable possibilities of th future cultural development of humanity: but within this system the proletariat—the culturally oppressed class—cannot develop these symptoms sufficiently to prepare itself for the organisation of the whole of society.

"It will manage to prepare itself for the 'destruction of the old world.' It will 'change its nature and ripen as the organiser of industry' only in the period of its dictatorship."^[6]

 

Consequently, the Bogdanov-Bazarov theory is wrong also, because it calls for far too much before the capture of power and because it fails to understand that the period of transition is a period of the cultural ripening of the proletariat. If the principles of Bogdanov's theory were correct, the problem of the proletarian revolution would be as insoluble as the problem of squaring the circle or of "perpetual motion."

1. Lenin: "The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Collected Works, vol. 16, p. 447, Russian edition.
2. In this connection see Lenin's remarkable and interesting argument in his "Collected Works," vol. 3, pp. 494–5.
3. The author is referring here to the scheme of the State Economic Planning Commission for a "single plan of production" worked out for the whole of the industry of the country.
4. V. Bazarov (Rudnev): "On the Path to Socialism," Kharkov, 1919, pp. 21–22.
5. Ibid, p. 22.
6. N. Bukharin: "Bourgeois Revolution and Proletarian Revolution," in Collection of Essays "Ataka," p. 232, first edition.