The only little thing i would take issue with is that i think you’re being overly critical of what you call the “Stalin model”. Different circumstances call for different approaches, and i would argue that at that time, the USSR simply had to undertake rapid collectivization and industrialization in order to catch up. They could not afford to maintain the NEP any further as the development would have been too slow.
China’s model works great for building up productive forces, provided you are in a period of peace and foreign countries are willing to come and invest capital. But the USSR was far more isolated globally in the 1920s and 30s than China was in the 80s and 90s. And war was on the horizon. If the USSR had adopted in the 1930s a model like that which Deng Xiaoping implemented, they would have lost the war against the Nazis. I think you recognize this as well:
You can justify it as something temporary that the Soviets needed to do to prepare for war against Germany
And in the years immediately after the war they needed to rebuild what had been destroyed, they were in no position, with so much of the country still heavily affected by the war, to go directly into such an ambitious transition as “Reform and Opening Up”. And then the Cold War started which meant that once again the USSR was under an existential threat and could not afford to shift to a more consumer focused economy, at least not until they developed the atom bomb.
But by the time that the situation had stabilized and they could have safely undertaken a Deng-style shift, Stalin was already dead, the principled Marxist-Leninists were sidelined, Khrushchevite revisionism had taken hold, and there was no political will anymore to take risks by radically reforming a system that had until then demonstrably worked quite well for the purpose of turning an underdeveloped, backward, agrarian society into an industrial superpower.
And from a theoretical perspective, it’s not entirely correct to say that what Stalin did wasn’t well grounded in Marx and Lenin. Lenin himself warns in “A Tax In Kind” against the corrosive influence of small business:
“But in many ways, the small-proprietary and private-capitalist element undermines this legal position, drags in profiteering and hinders the execution of Soviet decrees. […] because the continuation of the anarchy of small ownership is the greatest, the most serious danger, and it will certainly be our ruin (unless we overcome it)”
It is not contrary to Marxism to be wary of the petty-bourgeois mentality that private enterprise, even small enterprise, inevitably re-creates. The tension between private enterprise and the socialist state will always be present until one or the other is abolished. Of course, if implemented carefully, the strategy of a socialist state using market mechanisms to develop productive forces can be very beneficial, as we have seen from China’s stunning rise.
But the key to China’s success has been keeping private enterprise subordinated to the proletarian state and never allowing it to spiral out of control. This is a constant struggle that requires permanent vigilance. A less disciplined government than the CPC may well risk losing control, which could be fatal to the socialist project. In my view it is understandable why a socialist government would not want to take this risk unless it is very confident in itself and its ability to stick to what Deng called the “Four Cardinal Principles”:
Keep to the socialist road.
Uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Uphold the leadership of the Communist Party.
Uphold Marxism-Leninism (and in China’s case Mao Zedong Thought).
This is an excellent write-up, comrade!
The only little thing i would take issue with is that i think you’re being overly critical of what you call the “Stalin model”. Different circumstances call for different approaches, and i would argue that at that time, the USSR simply had to undertake rapid collectivization and industrialization in order to catch up. They could not afford to maintain the NEP any further as the development would have been too slow.
China’s model works great for building up productive forces, provided you are in a period of peace and foreign countries are willing to come and invest capital. But the USSR was far more isolated globally in the 1920s and 30s than China was in the 80s and 90s. And war was on the horizon. If the USSR had adopted in the 1930s a model like that which Deng Xiaoping implemented, they would have lost the war against the Nazis. I think you recognize this as well:
And in the years immediately after the war they needed to rebuild what had been destroyed, they were in no position, with so much of the country still heavily affected by the war, to go directly into such an ambitious transition as “Reform and Opening Up”. And then the Cold War started which meant that once again the USSR was under an existential threat and could not afford to shift to a more consumer focused economy, at least not until they developed the atom bomb.
But by the time that the situation had stabilized and they could have safely undertaken a Deng-style shift, Stalin was already dead, the principled Marxist-Leninists were sidelined, Khrushchevite revisionism had taken hold, and there was no political will anymore to take risks by radically reforming a system that had until then demonstrably worked quite well for the purpose of turning an underdeveloped, backward, agrarian society into an industrial superpower.
And from a theoretical perspective, it’s not entirely correct to say that what Stalin did wasn’t well grounded in Marx and Lenin. Lenin himself warns in “A Tax In Kind” against the corrosive influence of small business:
It is not contrary to Marxism to be wary of the petty-bourgeois mentality that private enterprise, even small enterprise, inevitably re-creates. The tension between private enterprise and the socialist state will always be present until one or the other is abolished. Of course, if implemented carefully, the strategy of a socialist state using market mechanisms to develop productive forces can be very beneficial, as we have seen from China’s stunning rise.
But the key to China’s success has been keeping private enterprise subordinated to the proletarian state and never allowing it to spiral out of control. This is a constant struggle that requires permanent vigilance. A less disciplined government than the CPC may well risk losing control, which could be fatal to the socialist project. In my view it is understandable why a socialist government would not want to take this risk unless it is very confident in itself and its ability to stick to what Deng called the “Four Cardinal Principles”:
Keep to the socialist road.
Uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Uphold the leadership of the Communist Party.
Uphold Marxism-Leninism (and in China’s case Mao Zedong Thought).