On So-Called ‘Socialism in One country’

Considering the arguments presented in my previous post, the treachery of Stalinism consists not in excessive authoritarianism, but in a failure and/or refusal to pursue and enforce genuinely proletarian policies. In other words, we must reject Stalinism not for its ‘totalitarianism’ (an honourable label which Stalin and his lackeys do not deserve), but, quite to the contrary, for its reconciliatory and often-times liberal attitude towards the bourgeoisie.

As Bordiga said, ‘A theoretical error is always at the root of an error of political tactics. In other words, it is the translation of the tactical error into the language of our collective critical consciousness.’¹ This is yet again proved true, given that Stalin’s deviations indubitably began with his theory of ‘socialism in one country’. It is therefore this theory that we shall explore first.

However, before we may explore Stalin’s deviations, we must explore from what he deviated. I shall therefore briefly explicate the understanding of the progression towards communism as given by Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

I. The presentation of communism by Marx and Engels

We find an early, and as yet blurry, description of the programmatic content of what will later be called the dictatorship of the proletariat in Engels’ Principles of Communism²:

‘Above all, [the dictatorship of the proletariat] will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.

‘It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.

‘Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.

‘In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.’ (§ 14, Principles…; my emphasis)

‘By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.

‘Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.

‘It will develop in each of these countries more or less rapidly, according as one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace.

‘It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.’ (§ 19, ibid.; my emphasis)

Here we see, albeit in an embryonic form, an understanding of communist society as one in which all of society owns all the means of production, where ‘all of society’ refers – due to the globalisation effected by capitalist development – to not only to society within a single nation, but to society within all civilised nations, which constitute a single, integral unit.

Further, Marx and Engels write in the Communist Manifesto³:

‘When, in the course of development [after the proletarian revolution], class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation⁴, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

‘In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.’ (Chapter II, Manifesto…)

From these disquisitions of Marx and Engels, we can draw, among others, the following two conclusions:

Communism is that mode of production wherein all of society toils in common for the common good; wherein there are no class distinctions and no distinction of interest between individuals; and wherein oppression, and its systematised form, the state, have been made obsolete.
Because the development of trade within capitalism has bound nations indissolubly to one another, all nations constitute a single society.

II. The distinction between socialism and communism

In Part I, we have explored the definition of communism. Now, we shall explore the definition of socialism, and its relation to communism.

This distinction is, most famously, expounded by Marx in his critique of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany’s Gotha Programme⁵:

‘Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase “proceeds of labor”, objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

‘What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

‘But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. […]

‘But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’ (Chapter I, Critique…)

Lenin further corroborates this in his The State and Revolution⁶:

‘It is this communist society, which has just emerged into the light of day out of the womb of capitalism and which is in every respect stamped with the birthmarks of the old society, that Marx terms the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society.

‘The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially-necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. And with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. After a deduction is made of the amount of labor which goes to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it.’ (Chapter V, State and Revolution)

‘And so, in the first phase of communist society (usually called socialism) “bourgeois law” is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e., only in respect of the means of production. “Bourgeois law” recognizes them as the private property of individuals. Socialism converts them into common property.’ (ibid.)

Thus, we can clearly see how socialism, or the lower stage of communism, is presented: a classless society, where the means of production are owned in common, but where unequal individuals still receive unequal proceeds from the commons; a communist society which still has not completely outgrown its bourgeoisness.

III. Is socialism achieveable in a single country alone?

This question we can now answer resolutely in the negative. Knowing that socialism, in the Leninist sense⁷, can only exist when all of society owns all the means of production as one man, the only argumentation that could prove socialism in one country achieveable would be to prove that one country could be separated entirely from all others, and could exist, as an ‘island’ of sorts, economically and socially completely divorced from international happenings.

Unless one nation is separated so clearly from another that there can be no significant interpenetration between their social forces – as social forces par excellence, and not simply as national forces – they constitute a single society. Such separation has never been achieved ever since capitalism has developed (although many attempts were made), not by the U.S.S.R., not by the P.R.C., and not by the D.P.R.K. The oft established international political alliances (both revolutionary and reactionary) should be enough to demonstrate that.

With all this considered, we can say with great certainty, that the idea of ‘socialism in one country’ is a muddle at best.

IV. Stalin’s reply to I. Ivanov

On 18th January, 1938, a certain Ivan Philipovich Ivanov, who has just been removed from propaganda work at the Young Communist League and accused of being a Trotskyist, asked Stalin in a letter⁸:

‘Please, Comrade Stalin, will you explain whether we have the final victory of Socialism yet or not, perhaps there is additional contemporary material on this question connected with recent changes that I have not come across yet.’ (I. Ivanov’s letter to Stalin)

Stalin’s reply provides an unusually clear exposition of his theoretical incompetence.

‘Undoubtedly the question of the victory of Socialism in one country, in this case our country, has two different sides.

‘The first side of the question of the victory of Socialism in our country embraces the problem of the mutual relations between classes in our country. This concerns the sphere of internal relations.

‘[…]

‘The second side of the question of the victory of Socialism in our country embraces the problem of the mutual relations between our country and other countries, capitalist countries; the problem of the mutual relations between the working class of our country and the bourgeoisie of other countries. This concerns the sphere of external, international relations.’ (Stalins reply to Ivanov, ibid.)

This is a muddle. Had the U.S.S.R. been a separate society from the rest of the civilised world, this should have been a proper grasp of the problem; given, however, that it was not, it only demonstrates the effect bourgeois-national thought had on Stalin. What is their ‘own’ bourgeoisie that is being talked about? It does not exist.

Assuming that, indeed, within the territory of the U.S.S.R., now only a single class resided, socialism still would not have been achieved – only a rather advanced stage of the proletarian dictatorship.

Stalin continues:

‘Can the working class of our country, in alliance – with our peasantry, smash the bourgeoisie of our country, deprive it of the land, factories, mines, etc., and by its own efforts build a new, classless society, complete Socialist society?’ (ibid.)

Now the issue is clear. Can socialism, a system embracing the entirety of a homogeneous society, be built within only a fraction of said society? I shall let the reader answer this question himself.

The international and national bourgeoisie are not fundamentally different beasts, and they ought not be treated so. Class struggle within the nation, class struggle across national borders – these are the same in all but colour, in all but superficial appearance. There is no theoretical distinction between the two.

V. A few notes on the word ‘socialism’

‘Socialism’ is a rather confusing word. There are many definitions running about, which I do not care to list – however, I believe I must give a simple outline of all the ways the word is used in which I personally support. This is how it will be used in my works.

Word	Definition
Socialism	The lower stage of communism
State socialism	The highest stage of the dictatorship of the proletariat, where all production is conducted by the proletarian state, but where classes have not yet been abolished, either within or without the borders of said state, or if the state only controls some and not all of the areas belonging to the society
Socialist state	A state seeking to implement socialism; state implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat

How I personally use the word ‘socialism’ (with regards to social formations, not ideologies).

Bordiga, Amadeo: The Democratic Principle. 1922. Pub. in Rassegna Comunista, Febuary 1922. ↩︎
Engels, Friedrich: The Principles of Communism. 1847. Pub. in Vorwärtz!, 1914. ↩︎
Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich: Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1847. Pub. in 1848. ↩︎
Although in the English translation, the word nation is used, which might appear to support the theories of the Stalinists, this is in fact a mistaken translation; the original German version of the two cited paragraphs does not contain that word. Instead, the phrase der assoziierten Individuen (lit. the associated individuals) is used. ↩︎
Marx, Karl: Critique of the Gotha Programme. 1875. Pub. in Die Neue Zeit, 1890-91. ↩︎
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: The State and Revolution. 1917. Pub. in 1918. ↩︎
‘In the Leninist sense’, because there also exists a vulgarised definition of socialism as ‘a system where the workers own the means of production’. The U.S.S.R.’s economic system, at certain times, has indeed met this definition. ↩︎
Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich: On the Final Victory of Socialism
in the U.S.S.R. 1938. Pub. in Collected Works of Joseph Stalin, Vol. 14 ↩︎

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