1. Nettl, J. P., The Soviet Achievement (New York, 1967), p.76.Google Scholar Howard J., Sherman, The Soviet Economy (Boston, 1969), p. 59 Google Scholar, italics in original. Thornton, Anderson, Russian Political Thought (Ithaca, 1967), p. 322.Google Scholar Merle, Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 93.Google Scholar

2. The Marxian intentions and aspirations of the Bolshevik economic program were understood by relatively few of the participants—those whose intellect permitted abstract thought and comprehension of general principles. Even many of the most fanatical never understood the revolution in terms beyond the corrupted ones of class war—terms that were partially the result of efforts to communicate Marxian socialism to the masses. Perhaps large numbers of the revolutionary masses understood the revolution only in terms of personal gain, through permissible robbery of the upper classes and personal vengeance. However this may be, the Marxian aspirations of the Bolsheviks constituted a comprehensive program of economic, political, and social destruction and reconstruction. A widespread state of “moral inversion” may have contributed fanaticism and ruthlessness on a scale necessary for Bolshevik success in achieving and maintaining power. For the analysis of “moral inversion” see Michael, Polanyi, “Beyond Nihilism,” in Knowing and Being : Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. Grene, Marjorie (Chicago, 1969), p. 3–23.Google Scholar

3. The neglect of Marxian aspirations is characteristic not only of studies of specific periods but of the general outlook. For example, Alexander Gerschenkron writes that “the Soviet government can be properly described as a product of the country's economic backwardness” (Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, Cambridge, Mass., 1962, p. 28). Elsewhere I have interpreted this statement in its context as “a denial of the power of ideas on history” (“The Polycentric Soviet Economy, ” Journal of Law and Economics, 12, no. 1 [1969] : 169). However, as Gerschenkron has pointed out to me, he acknowledges ideas as a force in history. With regard to Soviet history, he places importance on the idea of power. I agree that the idea of power has been a force in Soviet history but point out that however much the idea of power should be stressed, it does not account for the Russian Revolution and for the effort in the Soviet Union to organize production according to a noncommodity mode. Gerschenkron does not recognize Marxian doctrine as a significant force in Soviet history (see, for example, Continuity in History and Other Essays, Cambridge, Mass., 1968, pp. 69 and 490), and it was this that I was acknowledging when I stated that “the Gerschenkron thesis turns the Russian Revolution into a mere industrial revolution” (op. cit.). Many writers have mistaken the result of the Revolution—industrialization—for its purpose.

4. See, for example, Arnold, Arthur Z., Banks, Credit, and Money in Soviet Russia (New York, 1937)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boris, Brutzkus, Economic Planning in Soviet Russia (London, 1935)Google Scholar; Farbman, Michael S., Bolshevism in Retreat (London, 1923)Google Scholar; Lancelot, Lawton, An Economic History of Soviet Russia, 2 vols. (London, 1932)Google Scholar; A., Yugoff, Economic Trends in Soviet Russia (New York, 1930).Google Scholar

5. Brutzkus reported that in keeping with the Marxian principle of moneyless economy, the production of enterprises was put at the disposal of Glavki without being brought to a common denominator. The Glavki had no basis for assessing outputs of enterprises and their relative productivities and thereby had no rational basis for the allocation of factors of production. The effort to establish an economy in natura, or to organize it along the lines of a peasant community or a factory, broke down because the economic system of a peasant community and that of the socialist state are not comparable in size. “In such cases differences in degree become differences in kind” (Economic Planning in Soviet Russia, p. 37). Brutzkus noted that the attempt resulted in a lesson learned and that the Five-Year Plan was founded on the basis of a money economy.

Lawton gave independently the same account of the breakdown. He wrote that “one of the chief causes of industrial collapse was disregard of economic calculation. This disregard was as much the consequence of policy as of unavoidable circumstance” (An Economic History of Soviet Russia, 1 : 107). Finding itself with no basis for making allocative-distributive decisions, the Supreme Economic Council retreated to preferential allocation to “essential” industries and experienced for the first time the problem of discriminating between the “essential” and the “nonessential” in an interdependent system.

In The Logic of Liberty (Chicago, 1951), Michael Polanyi gives a more general theoretical statement why centralized planning as originally intended is impossible.

6. It appears that the official “line” of the Stalin era was a while in forming, and I am advised by an anonymous reviewer that there was a serious scholarly literature in Russia during the 1920s that was quite different. Although the official “line” on “war communism” is still followed in recent Soviet general works in which the interpretation of many issues is the product of politically guided editorial conferences, I am informed that the official “line” is being gradually undermined in the Soviet Union by a new monographic literature in which various policies of the “war communism” period are studied.

7. Maurice, Dobb, Soviet Economic Development Since 1917, rev. ed. (London, 1966; orig. pub. 1948), p. 122.Google Scholar

8. Davies, R. W., The Development of the Soviet Budgetary System (Cambridge, Eng., 1958), p. 26 Google Scholar

9. Carr, E. H., The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, vol. 2 (New York, 1952).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Daniels, R. V., Russia (Englewood Cliffs, 1964), p. 90.Google Scholar

11. Daniels, R. V., The Conscience of the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 94.Google Scholar

12. Adam, Ulam, The Bolsheviks (New York, 1965), p. 467.Google Scholar

13. See, for example, George, Katkov, “The Kronstadt Rising,” in St. Antony's Papers : Number 6 (London, 1959), p. 11–74.Google Scholar

14. The quotations are cited from the 1960-68 English translation (London : Lawrence and Wishart) of the Collected Works, and all italics are in the original. To avoid numerous notes, the page and volume references are given in the text. It is not a purpose of this study to show the specific influence of others on Lenin's thought. It should not be assumed that all the ideas quoted from Lenin were original with him

15. Dobb, Soviet Economic Development, pp. 83-84.

16. Carr reports that a resolution prepared by Lenin, approved by the Bolshevik central committee, and passed by a conference of representatives of factories and committees in Petrograd on May 30, 1917, “constituted the most important Bolshevik pronouncement before the revolution on the organization of industry.” The resolution spoke of “the need of an ‘all-state organization- for the purpose of ‘the organization on a broad regional and finally all-state scale of the exchange of agricultural implements, clothing, boots and similar goods, ’ for ‘general labor service’ …” (Bolshevik Revolution, 2 : 60-61).

17. No Marxian socialist thought that a system of commodity production was a socialist economy. This agreement on basic principle is sometimes obscured by the interpretation of the conflict between “anarchic” and “bureaucratic” preferences. The fight over “workers’ control” was not a fight over planning, and when the planned regulation of the national economy by workers’ control failed, it was workers’ control and not planning that was abandoned. The leftist preference for planning by collegial administration was partially defeated by the practical problem of determining under such a system responsibility for action or inaction. Such practical faults of a hierarchy of collegia and the chaos of workers’ control lent authority to Lenin's insistence on the necessity for individual authority.

18. Lenin may have regarded the reconciliation of socialism with commodity production as a temporary policy. However, the reconciliation that he began has developed to the point that today economic theorists cannot distinguish essential differences between “socialist planning” and commodity production. All pronouncements about the Soviet achievement overlook the failure of a revolution whose intention was to replace a system of commodity production with a system of socialist planning.

19. Farbman, Bolshevism in Retreat, pp. 122-23.

20. At the Eleventh Party Congress (vol. 33), as a defense against universal ridicule, Lenin said that the Bolsheviks had not failed, because the decrees and resolutions of “war communism” were only intended as propaganda to convey to the masses the Bolshevik economic and political program. He did not disclaim the ideas behind the decrees and resolutions but only denied that the Bolsheviks ever intended to implement them. At the same time, he claimed that the measures were implemented because of war conditions.

21. Speaking on November 7, 1920, Stalin looked back on “Three Years of Proletarian Dictatorship” and said, “Our work of construction during these three years has, of course, not been as successful as we would have liked to see it, but … in the first place, we had to build under fire… . Second, we were building not bourgeois economy, where everyone pursues his own private interests and does not worry about the state as a whole, pays no heed to the question of planned, organized economy on a national scale. No, we were building socialist society. This means that the needs of society as a whole have to be taken into consideration, that economy has to be organized on an all-Russian scale in a planned, conscious manner. No doubt this task is incomparably more complicated and more difficult” (The October Revolution, London, 1934, p. 43).

See The Basic Writings of Trotsky, ed. Irving Howe (London, 1963). Trotsky wrote that “the period of so-called ‘war communism’ (1918-21)” was a period when “economic life was wholly subjected to the needs of the front” (p. 160). Nevertheless, “it is necessary to acknowledge, however, that in its original conception it pursued broader aims. The Soviet government hoped and strove to develop these methods of regimentation directly into a system of planned economy in distribution as well as production. In other words, from ‘war communism’ it hoped gradually, but without destroying the system, to arrive at genuine communism” (p. 161). He went on to say that “reality, however, came into increasing conflict with the program of ‘war communism.' Production continually declined, and not only because of the destructive action of the war.” A result was that “the collapse of the productive forces surpassed anything of the kind that history had ever seen. The country, and the government with it, were at the very edge of the abyss.” Trotsky then spoke of “the Utopian hopes of the epoch of war communism” and said that even if revolution had occurred in the West, it could be said with certainty that “it would still have been necessary to renounce the direct state distribution of products in favour of the methods of commerce” (p. 162).

wrote, Victor Serge, “The social system in these years was later called ‘War Communism.' At the time it was called simply ‘Communism,’ and any one who, like myself went so far as to consider it purely temporary was looked upon with disdain. Trotsky had just written that this system would last over several decades if the transition to a genuine, unfettered Socialism was to be assured. Bukharin … considered the present mode of organization to be final” (Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941, London, 1963, p. 115).Google Scholar

22. The views that blame market economy for being the cause of the Great Depression have influenced history for three decades. Even if policies resulting from such an interpretation have been beneficial, the interpretation itself is questionable in view of evidence that the erroneous policy of the Federal Reserve System, an agency of the federal government, was instrumental in placing the American economy in a depression.

23. For whatever reason, the copy of Farbman's book, Bolsltcvism in Retreat, that has been in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University since 1923 was read for the first time in November 1968 when I separated the unopened pages. Farbman, who was in Russia during the “war communism” period as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, the Observer, and the Chicago Daily News, was an obvious source of information.