Building socialism in a separate country. Building socialism in one country

In August the National Bureau economic research The United States published the report “From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia, 1905–2016.” Briefly, the results of the report can be summarized as follows: by the 100th anniversary of the revolution, Russia had completely eliminated all its social achievements - inequality in the country had returned to the level of 1905. "Very striking fast growth income inequality since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the authors write. - It is also worth noting that this enormous growth was accompanied by a serious decline in the incomes of the poorest 50% of the population. The collapse of the USSR and egalitarian ideology as it occurred in Russia appears to have led to a relatively high tolerance for wealth inequality and the concentration of private property.” Actually, all retellings of the report in Russian media and recorded this result.

No one paid attention to the fact that among the authors of the report were Thomas Piketty- an economist who is considered the main modern theorist of capital, a sort of Karl Marx of the 21st century, author of the excellent 700-page book “Capital in the 21st Century”. In it, Piketty explains that the dynamics of inequality over the past 110 years have been subject to characteristic global changes, with a fall in inequality in the mid-20th century and a subsequent rise in the 1980s and 1990s. There he explains the nature of this phenomenon, makes a very disappointing forecast and looks for options to curb the growth of inequality. This is a very important book - the first work in the field of theoretical economics, which has the basis to displace the achievements of the "Washington Consensus", which dictates that all countries have low inflation, tight monetary policy and institutional reforms. Piketty's work has the basis to give modern politicians a tool for shaping economic policy in the 21st century. If, of course, politicians want to take this tool into their hands.

Dynamics of inequality

Piketty examines the period from 1900 to 2010 in fact according to two parameters: the dynamics of the distribution of national income of a wide range of countries (USA, Europe, developing countries) and the dynamics of the distribution of property (capital) of countries. Both indicators have undergone dramatic changes over these 110 years.

Graph 1 shows the evolution of income inequality in Europe and the United States, 1900–2010. As we can see, at the beginning of the last century, the top 10% of the population on both continents received 40–45% of national income. It is characteristic that at the beginning of the period the United States was a slightly fairer territory than Europe, which they owed to the egalitarian morality of their founding fathers and the youth of the country (relative meager inheritance).

After the Great Depression of the 1930s, the level of inequality began to decline very quickly. In the 1940s, the top decile already owned only 35% of the national income, after the war - 32%, and in the 1970s only 30%.

After this, inequality begins to rise. Slower in Europe - here the top decile makes up only 5% of national income, and truly rapid in the USA, which in 2010 exceeded

Black clothes

In 2014-2015, in the top 10 countries with greatest wealth Denmark entered. Indeed, the Gini index, which measures the level of economic inequality, in Denmark for wealth is 0.9. However, if this index is calculated based on income, then it is 0.2. This shows that Denmark is using wealth to invest in the economy. The system operates in such a way that savings are converted into investments, due to which new jobs are created, and new jobs are better than old ones that are eliminated, and accordingly they are more expensive. Hence the growth in wages and income. Thus, inequality becomes the engine of economic development.

But if, with high inequality, savings are not transformed into investments that create new jobs, then inequality dresses in “black clothes” and becomes the gravedigger of economic growth.

Today Russia is characterized by high wealth inequality (Gini index - 0.9) and high income inequality (Gini index - 0.4). At the same time, over the past fifteen years, approximately 300 thousand good jobs disappear annually and the same number of bad ones are created, with lower wages. Domestic savings in Russia are approximately equal to savings taken out of the country. Thus, this wealth does not generate new jobs and economic growth.

But the wealth that is located within the country is also not transformed into investments that would lead to the creation of jobs with high wages. Therefore, our inequality is in black clothes.

There is no clear answer to the question of why this happens. Russia became a poor country in the 1900s, but today we are a middle-income country. We are currently in approximately 50th place in terms of GDP level per capita in world rankings. We are caught in the middle income trap. The oligarchic capitalism that we have built does not set itself the goals and objectives of forming a middle class, but considers only such ways of business development that would give a high rate of profit at low costs.

Only 32 million people are now employed in large and medium-sized enterprises (good jobs) out of a working population of 70 million. Another 15-20 million are good jobs in small businesses and self-employment. This means that 18-20 million workers work in the informal economy. This is the development model that we chose twenty-five years ago and do not want to change.

Other countries have created mechanisms to overcome the middle-income trap. They are associated with the periodic release of workers employed in the most backward and inefficient areas. At the same time, jobs with high wages are created in advanced areas. The funds received by workers enter the economy and create demand, in response to which new jobs begin to appear, but with a new level of wages. As a result, average wages in the country as a whole are becoming higher.

Meanwhile, in order to launch growth mechanisms, it is necessary to create jobs with high wages. It is necessary, as they say now, political will, which could force oligarchic capital to create such jobs. For now, representatives of oligarchic capital live in confidence that, given the current low level of wages, the economy can grow.

A progressive tax is not the best mechanism. Raising taxes in general leads to additional pressure on business, and therefore is not a measure that stimulates growth. However, if in Russia one part of society does not think about how to invest in economic development, then a progressive tax may become for the authorities practically the only available mechanism for maintaining political stability. Apparently, a progressive tax may be the fear that will force oligarchic capital to invest in people.

The discussion about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country began in the mid-1920s. Until 1924, this issue was not raised by anyone in the party. Opinion about the victory of the socialist revolution in several advanced countries as necessary condition the victory of socialism in the USSR was shared by all theorists and ideologists of the RCP(b). It is known that Lenin always connected the development of Russia with international events: “The complete victory of the socialist revolution,” he said in November 1918, “is unthinkable in one country, but requires the most active cooperation of at least several advanced countries, to which We cannot include Russia." This was the opinion with some variations until the early 1920s. was considered generally accepted among the Bolsheviks, despite the defeat of the Communists in Germany. In May 1924, Stalin wrote in his pamphlet “On the Foundations of Leninism” that overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie and establishing the power of the proletariat in one country does not mean ensuring the complete victory of socialism. For the final victory of socialism,” he continued, “the efforts of one country, especially a peasant one like Russia, are not enough; This requires the efforts of “the proletarians of several advanced countries.” Thus, the entire theoretical tradition of the Bolsheviks was aimed at considering their revolution as part of the international revolutionary process.

One of the first to express the exact opposite opinion was the “favorite of the party” N.I. Bukharin. In February 1924, speaking on the issue of building socialism, he noted that he was talking about “one, separate country.” Proclaiming this thesis, Bukharin understood by it a more cautious attitude towards the peasantry, an alliance with the countryside and a balanced pace on the issue of industrialization. Bukharin criticized international social democracy, which believed that in Russia there is a “colossal numerical superiority of the peasantry,” and the proletariat “swims like a fly in the peasant’s milk, and this proletariat-fly, placed in front of the elephant-peasant, cannot do anything.” communist revolution." At the end of 1924, Stalin also changed his opinion on this issue. He no longer denied the possibility of building socialism in the USSR in the absence of victorious socialist revolutions in the West. The logic of the fight against Trotskyism required criticism of the “capitulators” and “defeatists.” In April 1925, at the XIV Conference of the RCP(b), a new theoretical and political position was formalized. Stalin, citing a number of Lenin's statements from different years, emphasized that it was Lenin, and not anyone else, who discovered the truth about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country.

Stalin and Bukharin, having become the main theoreticians of the proclaimed slogan, divided this issue into two parts. The essence of the first of them was that the final victory of socialism in the USSR as “a complete guarantee against the restoration of capitalist orders” could not be achieved without the victory of the socialist revolution in other countries. The second part of the question was supported by Lenin’s quotes taken out of context and contained the conclusion that the complete victory of socialism could be achieved without corresponding revolutions in the West.

Trotsky saw the true meaning of the theory about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country in the desire of the Soviet party and state bureaucracy to protect its dominant position in the country and the international communist movement. For these purposes, it was beneficial for her to call in advance socialism everything that is happening and will happen within the country, regardless of what happens outside its borders.

In 1926-1927 the question of the possibility of the victory of socialism in one particular country became a key area of ​​theoretical disagreement within the party.

Stalin accused Trotsky of allegedly underestimating the potential capabilities of the peasantry and opposing Lenin's concept the union of workers and working peasants as the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution,” formulated by him at the beginning of the 20th century, was criticized. Then Trotsky wrote that the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia, relying only on its own resources, is impossible, since “the working class will inevitably be crushed by the counter-revolution at the moment when the peasantry turns its back on it.” For such a formulation of the issue, the Stalin-Bukharin bloc accused the opposition of lack of faith in the victory of socialist construction and pessimism. Trotsky's statements that the theory of "permanent revolution" has no relation to the internal party discussion and that he considers this issue to have long been written off in the archives did not stop Stalin. He attacked the opposition again and again, accusing it of “lack of faith” in the internal forces of the revolution.

Choosing a path

The New Economic Policy had its prototype in the form of program documents of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary parties of 1918-1920, in which the ideas of a “mixed” (state-market) economy were combined with the ideas of political democracy. So, in April 1919, the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party addressed party organizations with a declaration on the problems and prospects of the world socialist revolution. The main content of this declaration is the fruitful idea of ​​​​the synthesis of old capitalist and new socialist forms relationships that did not exclude, but mutually complemented each other. The document emphasized that “the existence of a new social system is possible only to the extent and sequence in which the individual components of its activities first pass through the consciousness and will of the majority, finding soil in the real conditions of their life and psychology.”

In July 1919, the manifesto of the Central Committee of the Menshevik Party “What to do?” appeared. outlining the socio-economic and political platform. It was supposed, while maintaining large industrial enterprises in the hands of the state, to allow the use of private capital wherever it promises improvement, expansion or reduction in the cost of production. The manifesto contained articles on the refusal to nationalize small industry, the system food dictatorship. They were to be replaced by: state purchases of grain at negotiated prices, granting freedom of cooperation to private individuals while maintaining government regulation the most important consumer goods.

A few years later, the Bolsheviks began to implement the economic program of the opposition socialist parties, from which NEP was born. However, already in the first half of the 1920s. Theoretical systems like the one formulated by E. A. Preobrazhensky are born. His concept of “primitive socialist accumulation” indicated that socialism and NEP were supposedly incompatible. Denying the NEP, Preobrazhensky still believed that it could not be swept away with one blow and destroyed immediately. It is necessary to carry out a systematic conscious "devouring" of the private economy by the accelerated powerful development of the socialist system, which strengthens its base through the process of intensified "accumulation". Moreover, the basis of “primary socialist accumulation,” as Preobrazhensky believed, should be the withdrawal of funds from the countryside and from the farms of small producers. Initially, Preobrazhensky did not even hesitate to directly say that socialist system must “exploit” the countryside and small producers in the city. He later replaced "exploitation" with softer terms. Soon, Stalin would begin to actively use Preobrazhensky’s recipes, slightly modifying them, in implementing his idea of ​​building socialism in the USSR.

At the everyday level, the idea of ​​curtailing the NEP began to grow in the second half of the 20s. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) receives many letters from ordinary citizens, which contain calls to “stop the growth of the NEP”, “sing him a break,” etc. Some of the party and state leadership, however, held a different opinion. Thus, Bukharin in 1925 put forward a slogan, which he was forced to abandon at the XIV Party Congress: “The entire peasantry, all its layers must be told: get rich, accumulate, develop your economy.” Bukharin’s change in his views allowed Trotsky to caustically remark that he “turns the ‘theoretical mare’ either tail or muzzle, depending on his mood.” In turn, Bukharin stated: “Trotskyists are “gardeners” who pull the plant by the top so that it grows faster.”

Since 1926, versions of the first five-year plan began to be developed in the USSR. G. Ya. Sokolnikov and other Narkomfin specialists (with whom economists N. D. Kondratyev and N. P. Makarov agreed) believed that the main task was to develop agriculture to the very high level. In their opinion, only on the basis of an agriculture that has become stronger and has risen to the level of “prosperity”, capable of sufficiently feeding the population, can conditions arise for the expansion of Soviet industry.

One of the options for forward movement, developed by Gosplan specialists (V.A. Bazarov and others), provided for the development of all industries producing consumer goods, and those types of means of production, the need for which was massive. Economists of this direction argued that everywhere in the world intensive industrial development began with the support of these particular industries.

Bukharin and his group proposed systematically developing heavy and light industries. They hoped to use the funds received to accelerate the pace of industrialization, but in such a way that at the same time there would be an expansion of the production of consumer goods. Otherwise, in their opinion, accelerated industrialization will lead to a decrease in the standard of living of the working masses.

From the beginning of 1924, one of the key departments developing industrial development plans was headed by F. E. Dzerzhinsky. Of all the leaders of the Supreme Economic Council, according to N.V. Volsky (Valentinov), who personally knew many Bolshevik leaders, Dzerzhinsky was the best. He was appreciated even by non-party specialists, who said after the sudden death of their boss: “It’s a pity that Dzerzhinsky died. It was good to work with him. He valued and protected us specialists. We could sleep peacefully with him. We weren’t afraid that a “black raven” would come.” ". The attitude towards the “former” was completely different from Stalin, who said that they “stink like ferrets” and you need to keep them at a distance from you.

Dzerzhinsky, while serving as chairman of the Supreme Economic Council, categorically spoke out against solving economic problems by strong-willed methods. He was convinced that the rate of industrial growth should be coordinated with the growth and needs of agriculture. “In our relations with the countryside,” Dzerzhinsky emphasized, “there should be no place for exploitation with the expectation that agriculture will bring the necessary capital for the development of industry.”

However, even in the Supreme Economic Council not everyone supported their chairman. Deputy Dzerzhinsky G.L. Pyatakov, whom “Iron Felix” called “the biggest disrupter of industry,” was a supporter of the accelerated development of industry, while advocating an increase in wholesale industrial prices. The latter, as Dzerzhinsky believed, would only worsen the gap between city and countryside.

The death of Dzerzhinsky (July 20, 1926) seriously undermined the position of that wing in the leadership that sought to preserve the NEP. An attack on private capital and the confiscation of “surplus” from the peasants began. The choice of the path of forced industrialization meant the end of the NEP. In August 1926, V.V. Kuibyshev, loyal to Stalin, became chairman of the Supreme Economic Council. He tried to remove Dzerzhinsky's slogans from the practice of the Supreme Economic Council as quickly as possible and replace them with new ones - Stalin's.

By the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, not only the idea of ​​industrialization, but also the idea of ​​the need for a high pace of its implementation had become established in the leading circles of the party. At the same time, a transition was made to strict centralization and concentration of all resources, regulation of the national economy with the help of state plans. Once influential group Bukharin was defeated in 1928.

By the beginning of the XVI Party Conference (April 1929), Gosplan specialists had prepared two versions of the plan: the minimum (“starting”) and the maximum (“optimal”). The latter's indicators were higher on average by 20%. Attempts to make some adjustments to the plan, undertaken by A.I. Rykov, were unsuccessful. The Party Conference, followed by the V All-Union Congress of Soviets in May 1929, adopted the “optimal” version of the five-year plan for the development of the national economy for 1928/1929-1932/1933.* At the time the plan was approved, its implementation had already begun. Over five years, it was planned to increase industrial output by 180%, capital goods by 230%, agricultural growth was to be 55%, and national income 103%. Over the same years, real wages were supposed to increase by 71%, peasant incomes by 67%, and industrial productivity by 110%. The adopted plan was extremely strenuous; it involved overcoming many difficulties. Nevertheless, under favorable circumstances, it was feasible to implement. However, soon the planned indicators will begin to be artificially inflated, which will lead to colossal deformations not only in the socio-economic sphere, but also in the political sphere.

Thus, 1929 became the year of the “great turning point.” By this time, the NEP had actually been curtailed, and in the country’s leadership in relation to further paths development of the state, Stalin’s point of view prevailed, a system of centralized government controlled all aspects of society.

[*]The financial and agricultural year in the USSR lasted from October 1 to September 30. Since 1931, planning and financial calculations began to coincide with the astronomical year (from January 1 to December 31).

There is a completely objective mechanism for the constant growth of inequality in conditions of low economic growth. It can only be broken by implementing a policy of unconditional growth

In August, the US National Bureau of Economic Research published a report, From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Wealth in Russia, 1905–2016. Briefly, the results of the report can be summarized as follows: by the 100th anniversary of the revolution, Russia had completely eliminated all its social achievements - inequality in the country returned to the level of 1905. “The very rapid rise in income inequality since the collapse of the Soviet Union is striking,” the authors write. “It is also worth noting that this enormous growth was accompanied by a serious decline in the incomes of the poorest 50% of the population. The collapse of the USSR and egalitarian ideology as it occurred in Russia appears to have led to a relatively high tolerance for wealth inequality and the concentration of private property.” In fact, all retellings of the report in the Russian media recorded this result.

No one paid attention to the fact that among the authors of the report were Thomas Piketty is an economist who is considered the main modern theorist of capital, a sort of Karl Marx of the 21st century, and the author of the excellent 700-page book “Capital in the 21st Century.” In it, Piketty explains that the dynamics of inequality over the past 110 years have been subject to characteristic global changes, with a fall in inequality in the mid-20th century and a subsequent rise in the 1980s and 1990s. There he explains the nature of this phenomenon, makes a very disappointing forecast and looks for options to curb the growth of inequality. This is a very important book - the first work in the field of theoretical economics, which has grounds to displace the achievements of the "Washington Consensus", which dictates that all countries have low inflation, tight monetary policy and institutional reforms. Piketty's work has the basis to give modern politicians a tool for shaping economic policy in the 21st century. If, of course, politicians want to take this tool into their hands.

Dynamics of inequality

Piketty examines the period from 1900 to 2010 in fact according to two parameters: the dynamics of the distribution of national income of a wide range of countries (USA, Europe, developing countries) and the dynamics of the distribution of property (capital) of countries. Both indicators have undergone dramatic changes over these 110 years.

Graph 1 shows the evolution of income inequality in Europe and the United States, 1900–2010. As we can see, at the beginning of the last century, the top 10% of the population on both continents received 40–45% of national income. It is characteristic that at the beginning of the period the United States was a slightly fairer territory than Europe, which they owed to the egalitarian morality of their founding fathers and the youth of the country (relative meager inheritance).

After the Great Depression of the 1930s, the level of inequality began to decline very quickly. In the 1940s, the top decile already owned only 35% of the national income, after the war - 32%, and in the 1970s only 30%.

After this, inequality begins to rise. Slower in Europe, where the top decile makes up only 5% of national income, and truly fast in the US, which in 2010 surpasses 1900 levels, rejecting the egalitarian dream of the Founding Fathers no less than Russian elite rejected the ideas of Karl Marx.

Since within the top decile there is also an uneven distribution of income and it is precisely the one percent of the richest citizens of their countries that constitutes their elite and sub-elite, Piketty also studies the dynamics of national income, which falls on the top centile (one percent of the population). It is shown in Chart 2. As we can see, in the United States, the wealthiest percent of the population has regained its status over the century: the share of national income that goes to the top one percent in the United States was 18% in 1900, and 7% in 1970. (colossal losses - minus 11%), and in 2010 - again 18%. Europe is holding back its elite more. If in 1900 one percent of citizens own 20% of Germany’s national income, in 1970 - 10%, then in 2010 they “win back” only two percent, the total is 12% of national income.

Developing countries show the same letter V (graph 2). On the eve of decolonization, one percent of the population of developing countries owned from 16 to 26% of national income. By the 1980s, this figure had dropped to 6–12%, and is now at 12–18%.

Here we emphasize that we see the dynamics of inequality as a global process. Given the difference in the starting conditions of the wealth of countries, politics, national culture and current events, rich people of all countries first have a lot, then lose a lot, and by the end of the 20th century, to one degree or another, they regain their share.

To understand the scale of inequality, let's do some simple calculations. Let the national income of a country be 1000 units and one hundred people live in it. If one percent takes 18% of national income, then its annual income is 180 units. The income of each of the top decile is 45 units. The income of each of the others is six units. That is, the absolute majority of people working in the country have to work all their lives (30 years) to earn the same amount as the top 1 percent of the richest earn in a year. This is one of the mechanisms for the uncontrollable growth of inequality. Most people cannot save money to acquire capital, and this is the key point.

Now let's move on to the property. Graph 3 shows the dynamics of the share of property ownership of the top 10% and the top one percent of the population in Europe and the United States, 1810–2010. According to this indicator, “input” inequality was even greater. In Europe, 10% of the population at the beginning of the First World War owned 90% (!) of the country’s property, in the USA - 80%. The top one percent owned 62% and 45% respectively. From the First World War until the end of the era of “general prosperity” (“The Glorious Thirty Years,” as Piketty calls it), the decile’s share of wealth fell to 60% of the country’s share (lost a third), and the centile’s share of wealth fell to 20–30% of the country’s share (lost half). In both cases, the process of increasing the share of property began after the 1970s, but not as intensely as income inequality.

Causes

Now in Russia this is often discussed: what needs to happen for the richest one percent (in our case, Russians) to give up half of their property? History gives not very pretty answers to this question.

The beginning of the 20th century was the First World War, the most brutal of all that had happened at that time: the Great Depression, the Great Revolution, the Second World War. This whole series of events hit hard for those who had capital. Expropriation, bankruptcy, defeat in the war and expropriation again, only not by the “reds”, but by the winners.

On the background Great Revolution and disasters brought no less by the Great Depression, Western states are decisively changing their tax policy. People like Franklin Roosevelt come to power and can talk about the New Deal, which was a painful operation for capital. We have forgotten that at the beginning of the last century, income taxes and taxes on capital amounted to a few percent. The state bore the burden of responsibility only for security and diplomacy; it had virtually no social obligations; it treated capital in all its forms as younger brother to the elder.

During the break between the two wars, the state was completely rebuilt. Top inheritance tax rates soared from 0-10% at the start of the century to 40% in the 1930s and 70% on the eve of World War II (see Chart 4). In particular, the Rockefellers were very unhappy with this invention of the American administration, and it was then that they came up with the option of transferring the inheritance to trust funds (at least that’s how Rockefeller III describes this story).

Capital was lost by the owners as a result of massive bankruptcies in the 1930s. And during the war, it was simply transferred to the ownership of the state, regardless of whether they were aggressor states or the “second front”. After the war in the losing countries, capital did not immediately return to the capitalists. The founder of Panasonic in his memoirs describes the restoration of his business empire as a long twenty-year process. However, he did not feel any frustration about this, believing that Japan and he were punished fairly.

IN developing countries The victory of the USSR gave rise to national revolutionary movements. Mass decolonization began. Rich people of the liberated countries gave their fortunes for the good national revolutions(this is described by Marquez), and those who did not give were deprived of capital as a result of these revolutions.

Fortunately for the peoples of the whole world, the power accumulated by states as a result of the Second World War was used by them to pursue policies of general welfare. For the countries of the capitalist world, this was to a large extent the merit of the USSR, which formed an alternative with a lot of advantages, supporting competition and reason in the political circles of the West. Suffice it to say that the de facto confiscatory inheritance tax lasted in Western countries until the early 1980s.

True, the ability of states to implement fairly egalitarian economic policies rested to a large extent on the technological potential accumulated by plundered capitalists, which made it possible to engage in efficient mass production, which radically and quickly raised people's living standards. In the financial sector, mortgages were invented as a publicly available tool, which made it possible to acquire assets quickly, which influenced the mass ownership of property. The widespread development of the stock and bond markets and pension savings also allowed ordinary people to become owners of capital.

Governments were also in no hurry to part with their property, actively lending and developing state assets. The justification was the enormous social obligations that the state of the Glorious Thirty Years assumed. But it all ended quickly.

What caused the reversal? Why was it not possible to maintain the level of equality that arose?

Piketty explores the role of the rapid rise in managerial salaries, which, of course, has affected the growth of inequality. But that wasn't the main thing. In our opinion, among the event factors, the main reason for the turn towards the growth of inequality in each individual country was globalization, which broke the connection of productive capital with their countries, led to a sharp growth of the offshore economy and formed a powerful bloc of international financial capital.

Further, a virtual economy appeared, which formed large masses of capital in general, in no way connected with the host country. To this it is worth adding the transfer of economic growth from countries of the developed world to developing ones. As a result, a new cosmopolitan political elite, the main question for which (apparently in all countries) has long been the question of how to get rid of the social obligations undertaken by its predecessors, which constantly pose a risk to maintaining the growth of its global assets.

Main mechanism of inequality

However, wars and revolutions are not mechanisms for managing inequality. They are a consequence of ignorance or non-use of real mechanisms. The researcher’s task is to identify among the many connections and factors the key ones that, by directly influencing them, can stop the growth of inequality. Marx chose surplus value as the central element of injustice. This is where all the ideas arose, the main one of which was the socialization of property.

Piketty makes another very powerful discovery. Using a large array of statistical data, he shows that the main factors of inequality are the gap between the return on capital and the rate of economic growth. According to Piketty, throughout almost the entire observable history of mankind, with the exception of the Glorious Thirty Years, the return on capital was higher, and many times higher than the growth rate of the economy, and therefore the growth rate of labor income. This is a fundamental point: it is not difficult to understand that over a couple of decades, a two to four percent yield gap will produce a colossal redistribution of wealth.

This effect is shown in graphs 5 and 6. The first shows the dynamics of return on capital before taxes and capital losses as a result of wars and revolutions and the growth rate of the world economy from antiquity to 2100. It can be seen that the yield varies in the range of 4.5 to 5.5%, but in general it is a fairly constant value. As a justification, Piketty cites data on the profitability of land holdings in agrarian societies, using them up to the 18th century, and then real data is used: the 18th–19th centuries - data on the profitability of capital in England and France, the 20th century - for a wider range of countries ( schedule 7). Projections for return on capital in the 21st century are somewhat reduced compared to the current reality, since the return on capital in the world is now higher - from seven to eight percent. Sovereign funds also show such returns. different countries, and endowments of American universities, and many other assets, in particular Russian OFZs. As for growth parameters, their estimates change with the transition from an agricultural to an industrial structure based on population growth rates and real economic data in the 19th and 20th centuries. From this graph it is clear that in the absence of capital management through taxes and alienation, the only period of convergence of the two indicators, and therefore, in fact, rental and labor income, was the very Glorious Thirty Years with the transition to a mass market, active state economic policy, widespread introduction of new production technologies.

In Chart 6, the same return estimates are adjusted for taxation and various forms of capital loss. Here we see the exclusivity of the 20th century even more clearly. For almost this entire century, the return on capital has been slightly below the growth rate of the economy and labor income, which has ensured an increase in equality that did not exist before and will not happen again.

Piketty's forecast for the 21st century is disappointing. He believes that if nothing is done in the area of ​​taxation of inheritance and capital income, then by about the middle of the 21st century, the degree of income and property inequality will return to the level of the early 20th century. This is facilitated by the accumulation and concentration of capital that has already occurred in the hands of a small share of the population. Chart 8 shows that the ratio of total world capital and annual world income for the second half of the 20th century recovered to the level of the beginning of the 20th century. According to Piketty, capital will continue to grow. As for concentration, it is especially noticeable in the rapid growth of the share of billionaires in the world: since 1987, the share of their wealth in relation to global wealth has grown from 0.2 to 1.6% (Graph 9).

Piketty sees no reason to repeat a long period of high rates of economic growth, as in the second half of the 20th century. Neither demographics nor the availability of high-performance technologies contribute to this. Finally, it is important that, given the state of affairs unchanged most of capital and profitability will be concentrated in Asia, since it is there that last years the largest accumulation of productive capital was observed.

Why is this happening? Why is profitability almost always higher than the rate of economic growth if this ratio is not controlled? Piketty responds this way: “The fundamental inequality of returns to capital and growth rates follows primarily from indisputable historical facts.”

What follows from this? If you are a private person, then you need to take care of accumulating capital and inheritance for your children. You will be of great help to them in the coming decades if you pass something on.

And if you are involved in policy and regulation and want to prevent rising inequality, then you need to think about a set of policy tools that:

1) stimulate economic growth, preferably at a level of six to seven percent per annum (if anyone remembers, there was such a famous and implemented idea - doubling GDP in ten years, and this is precisely growth of 7.2% per year);

2) provide the opportunity to own assets as much as possible more citizens (cheap mortgages, participation in capital big projects, different forms of accumulative capital with the ability to manage profitability (pensions, insurance, maternity, educational capital);

3) allow the redistribution of capital in favor of economic growth through progressive taxation. (Pikety especially likes the latter).

Now that we have dealt with inequality in the world, we can move to Russia.

Inequality in Russia

According to the report “From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia, 1905–2016,” inequality in Russia has risen sharply over the past three decades and has reached almost the same level that existed before the 1917 revolution. This refers to the share of national income of the richest 10% of people. As for the richest one percent of citizens, judging by their share in the total national income, we can conclude that we have even slightly surpassed the Russian Empire (see charts 10 and 11). The authors of the report also provide data for the United States and France - our level of income inequality significantly exceeds that of France and is approximately on the same level as the United States.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is a non-governmental think tank that has existed in the United States since 1920. The bureau collects and analyzes data on the economy, primarily the American one. The developed methods are also used to study the international aspects of economics. To assess the dynamics of inequality in Russia, scientists used national accounts, data from income declarations of the richest people in the form of statistical series from the time of the Soviet Union to modern Russia. True, for Russia the data used mainly reflects pre-tax income, unlike other countries, so some adjustment can be made for this. Nevertheless, the very fact that inequality is growing by leaps and bounds is beyond doubt.

It is interesting that income inequality in our country has declined somewhat after 2008 - this is shown by the Gini index, which is calculated by Rosstat. The index took off in 2007 and has declined consistently since then. This contradicts Piketty’s assertion that inequality falls precisely during periods of economic growth - the years after 2008 were mostly difficult for our economy. It can be assumed that several factors played a role at once - consistent attempts to whitewash the income of officials, an attempt at an anti-offshore campaign, and an increase in salaries for public sector employees, which “feeded” the less wealthy sections of the population. Long series of income data (see Chart 12) show that Soviet years a serious degree of homogeneity of society was indeed achieved - the middle class accounted for 50% of total income. But after perestroika, the poor became increasingly poorer. Their incomes differ greatly not only from the incomes of the richest, but also from the incomes of the middle class. According to calculations by the aforementioned National Bureau of Economic Research, between 1986 and 2016, the entire population of Russia became richer by 41%. However, not everyone is equally lucky. The middle income segment of the population, which is 40%, increased its income by only 15%. The lower segment, which is half of the country's population, began to receive 20% less income (!), but the richest part of the population - the remaining 10% - increased their income by 171%. Currently, according to the study, just over a million of the richest Russians have an average income of 470 thousand euros per year (about 33 million rubles) and have 20% of the national income. At the same time, more than 57 million of the poorest Russians (50% of the total population) receive only 7.9 thousand euros per year (553 thousand rubles). The results of the accumulation of capital by a narrow stratum in Russia are confirmed by other studies. At the end of 2016, the incomes of the 10% of the richest people in Russia and the 10% of the poorest differ by 16 times, notes the director of the Center for Socio-Political Monitoring of the Institute social sciences RANEPA Andrey Pokida. This is a very high value. The last time Russia came closest to this level of inequality was in the early 1990s. At that time, the decile coefficient, that is, the ratio of the incomes of the richest 10% and the poorest 10%, was 17. Then it decreased, and recently began to increase again. "Especially strong influence The crisis that began in 2014 contributed to the growth of economic inequality in the country. “In the current period, the poorest have become even poorer, and the richest have become even richer,” says the expert. Finally, these data are consistent with the special report “The level and lifestyle of the Russian population in 1989–2009” prepared by the Expert magazine. It was noted that, although in terms of absolute poverty (the share of the population with incomes below the subsistence level) market Russia by the end of the 2000s, as a first approximation, it returned to the late Soviet level of 13–15%, the share of the relatively poor (those with an income that is significantly less than the dominant one in the country - below 60% of the median income) has increased sharply over the twenty years of the market - from 11% in 1990 year to 26% in 2008. How income is distributed in Russia can be partly judged by the declaration campaign. The latest data: from January 1 to May 15, 324 residents of Russia filed income declarations of over a billion rubles per year with the Federal Tax Service, another 101 people declared income in the range from 500 million to a billion. The Federal Tax Service emphasized that there may be more billionaires, because taxpayers have the right not to indicate in their declarations income that is not subject to taxation, and income for which personal income tax has already been withheld by tax agents. However, some conclusions about the richest people based on the declaration can still be drawn by supplementing them with other data. Now the full results of the declaration campaign for 2015 alone are known - there are about 400 billionaires in our country, and about five thousand more declare income from 100 million to one billion rubles. At the same time, almost 300 thousand deposits in Russian banks exceed five million rubles. The Russian market for expensive cars (worth over two million rubles) in 2016 totaled about 150 thousand cars sold. Having compared a number of other figures, “Expert” offered his estimates: today there are about 300 thousand very rich households in the country (with an annual income of over 10 million rubles, bank savings of over five million rubles, and with real estate worth over a million dollars). Or 115 thousand citizens with incomes hundreds of times higher than the average income in the country - 30.5 thousand rubles per month (for more details, see “The Price of Justice”, “Expert” No. 9 for 2017). Now let's move on to the issue of distribution of national wealth. Here, recent trends are even less optimistic than in income. The share of wealth held by the 40% of people in the middle class is slowly but surely falling, while the share of the richest is just as surely growing. They already account for more than 70% of the national wealth (see Chart 13), with half of the wealth richest people stored offshore. “We know that Russia is a country with a high degree of wealth concentration, but we do not know the exact degree of its concentration and cannot compare, for example, with the United States,” the report says. But here are the estimates that the authors are willing to make: “The number of Russian billionaires registered in international rankings, such as the Forbes list, is extremely large by international standards. According to Forbes, the total wealth of billionaires in Russia was very small in the 1990s, increased significantly in the early 2000s, and stabilized at around 25–40% of national income between 2005 and 2015. This is much higher than the corresponding figures in Western countries: the total wealth of billionaires is between 5% and 15% of national income in the United States, Germany and France in 2005–2015, according to Forbes, despite the fact that the average income and average wealth are much higher. higher than in Russia. This clearly shows that the concentration of wealth at the very top in Russia is much higher than in other countries.” It is quite possible that the answer to the question of why this happened lies in the very recent past. Let us recall that in the post-Soviet period, citizens generally preferred to spend rather than save. And if the share of household final consumption in GDP increased to 53% by 2006 (45% in 1989), gross capital formation during this period decreased from 31 to 19% of GDP. Accordingly, only a very small number of citizens accumulated wealth during this period. In the absence of a developed stock market, which would allow the redistribution of property in the form of business shares more evenly, we ended up with an ultra-high concentration of wealth, which then began to flow to offshore jurisdictions. Now we find ourselves in a situation where more and more citizens live either on income from property (very small group those very rich), or on benefits (a significant part of the poorest).

Into the light

In general, judging by the dynamics of income and wealth inequality, the latter is much more difficult to take action on. It is one thing to increase wages for a large group of workers (public sector employees), and quite another to actually painstakingly redistribute national assets. By the way, let’s remember: this experience happened exactly in 2006–2007 - then there were three public IPOs: Rosneft, Sberbank and VTB. This gave approximately 200 thousand shareholders. A drop in the ocean, but the trend was definitely correct; then it was rolled up.

Another logical step was taken at the start of the anti-offshore campaign in 2012. Then an additional agreement was signed with the main Russian offshore - Cyprus - on providing information to the Russian tax authorities not only upon judicial, but also upon administrative requests. In 2015, the law “On the taxation of profits of controlled foreign companies and income of foreign organizations” came into force - Russian taxpayers were required to disclose to the tax service direct or indirect participation in foreign companies, as well as pay tax on undistributed profits that these organizations receive. You can get rid of this obligation if you stay in Russia for less than 183 days a year, then your tax resident status is lost. Wealthy citizens flocked to the exit. In the last two to three years, there has been a steady increase in requests from potential clients in Russia, says Maika Emmett, Managing Director of the CS Global Partners group of companies. “Our clients tend to be very wealthy individuals who are interested in obtaining a second citizenship to diversify their wealth and are looking for new ways to generate income,” explains Ms. Emmett. — We are seeing an increase in the number Russian entrepreneurs, applying for a second citizenship in countries such as Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, which certainly indicates an increase in interest in global investment and diversification of assets between several countries.”

However, leaving the company here and controlling it completely from abroad is most often a utopia. The same law on controlled foreign companies actually prohibits, for example, government procurement in offshore areas. The authorities continue to gradually tighten the screws regarding the withdrawal of funds. Municipal and district deputies are already prohibited from having assets abroad. The Central Bank insists that not only banks, but also non-state pension funds, which have recently become “holders” of large assets, as well as management companies and insurers, disclose all beneficiaries and are predominantly under Russian ownership - from January 28, 2018, no more than 10% authorized capital NP, management company and others may be located in offshore jurisdictions officially recognized by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. The trend is absolutely obvious: stop the leakage of assets and profits from them abroad. However, this is not enough. According to Expert’s calculations, only by inducing (or forcing) the richest (those 115 thousand people) to declare income at the current personal income tax rate, you can get, according to conservative estimates, an additional 500 billion rubles - here we are talking about withdrawing income not only and not so much from offshore companies, but from the shadows. And finally, we must take seriously the issue of introducing a progressive tax on excess income and supercapital.

Piketty himself views progressive taxation and deoffshorization as absolutely necessary tools for harmonizing the situation. However, he has little faith in the possibility of economic growth.

This is not the case for Russia specifically. Here, the possibility of growth at a rate of 6–7% per annum has been proven quite recently. In the first half of the 2000s, only due to the influx of export earnings and the normalization of money circulation, the economic growth rate increased to precisely these values. And then we had our Glorious Decade. The elasticity of our economy in terms of the money supply is very high, since we are experiencing a shortage of renewed capital almost everywhere - infrastructure, roads, equipment. High elasticity means that with a very small, reasonable injection of money into investments, costs will drop rapidly along the entire technological chain, we will get a high return on investment and stop the growth of inequality in a single country.

What we sorely lack is respect for the concept of “justice.” In intellectual and elite circles, it is customary to consider this concept to be outdated, unprogressive, leading society to archaic times. But now the obvious cannot be denied: the socio-economic model of a fair and simultaneous technological society of the mid-20th century turned out to be significantly more successful in terms of economic growth and widespread growth in living standards than the elitist model of the 90s of the 20th century.

German Akhmetshin
George, socialism as a living economic system is, in principle, impossible within national borders.

Shamil Buntuev
Herman, the proletariat, having taken power within the borders of a separate country, may well expropriate the entire bourgeoisie and organize production on the principle of a “single factory”, without competition and exploitation. This society will be socialism. The classics of Marxism considered it possible to build socialism in a separate country. Engels in 1890, in a letter to Otto Benigk, wrote that “The so-called “socialist society” is not, in my opinion, some kind of thing given once and for all... Its decisive difference from the current system lies, of course, in the organization of production on the basis common ownership of FIRST A SEPARATE NATION for all means of production" (PSS, vol. 26, p. 354). And even earlier, in 1845, Engels, in his “Eberfeld Speeches,” spoke about a communist society in a separate country, which is opposed to “anti-communist nations.”

German Akhmetshin
Shamil, and subsequently Marx and Engels abandoned these theoretical constructs due to their revealed utopianism.

Shamil Buntuev
Goskapists, especially those of the “cliffist” persuasion, object to this: such “socialism in a single country” will be one of the subjects of the world capitalist economy. For example, A. Budilo, in a polemic with Shapinov, writes: “State capitalism without national borders, without the military-industrial complex, a standing army, with a single currency, with state ownership of land, resources and means of production as a monopoly on a planetary scale would indeed not be capitalism, but the first phase of communism. The fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union as a monopoly, or as a “joint-stock company” was not just capitalism, but developed in the conditions of the world market, competitive accumulation of capital, in the “general situation of commodity production, competition”, about which says Lenin" (Discussion about "state capital". We begin to continue). Gachikus speaks even more sharply: “socialism in a single country (as well as in a single city, village, house) is impossible, it is a communist-fascist utopia aimed at dumbing down the workers” (Collapse of the USSR: the collapse of socialism or the collapse of old colonialism?). But here the question arises: why is socialism impossible at the level of a separate enterprise, a separate house, a separate commune, as the utopian socialists and cooperators wanted to build it (and their modern heirs, ideologists of “communism from below” like Agafonov-Fedorov and Predtechensky). Yes, the utopians were wrong in the methods of building socialism, and world capitalism will not be defeated exclusively by cooperative factories and communes, without a political revolution. But this does not negate the fact that the utopian socialists still managed to create working (albeit poorly working) models of socialism. Here is what Marx wrote about these experiments in the “Founding Manifesto of the International Working Men’s Association”: “But an even more significant victory of the political economy of labor over political economy property. We are talking about the cooperative movement, in particular about cooperative factories founded without any support by the efforts of a few brave “hands”. The significance of these great social experiences cannot be overstated. Not in words, but in deeds, the workers proved that production in large sizes and maintained in accordance with requirements modern science, is feasible in the absence of a class of owners using the labor of a class of hired workers; they proved that for successful production, the tools of labor should not be monopolized as instruments of domination over the worker and for his robbery, and that, like slave and serf labor, wage labor is only a transitory and lower form, which must give way to associated labor performed voluntarily, willingly and enthusiastically"

German Akhmetshin
However, the utopians were quickly defeated in a competitive environment, and that says it all. Stalin’s “socialism” was defeated in the same way, turning into undisguised Khrushchev-Brezhnev (Kosygin) capitalism.

German Akhmetshin
And the concept of reactionary nations, which was certainly correct when applied to the years 1830-1850, was no longer considered relevant by Marx and Engels when they saw the awakening and development of capitalist relations in Russia.

Shamil Buntuev
Herman, the whole point is that they didn’t refuse. Engels wrote his letter to Otto Benigk at the end of his life, in 1890. In general, the question of the possibility of building socialism in a single country is not worth a damn. Another thing is: can this “local communism” develop into world communism? Stalin recognized that the victory of socialism in a single country cannot be final, without the victory of the world revolution. There will be no world revolution, and “socialism in a single country” will degenerate into capitalism (but this does not apply to the USSR, since the USSR never “grew” in its development to the socialist level of socialization, did not become “a single factory with equality of labor and equality wages"). But all this does not mean at all that the proletariat should not begin socialist transformations at all until its power is established throughout the world.

German Akhmetshin
Shamil, they refused, if only for the simple reason that they saw capitalist development in Russia, the emergence of a proletariat there. Moreover, they even considered the option of building socialism in Russia with the help of the peasant community. As for socialist transformations, no one says that the proletariat should not begin them before the victory of the revolution throughout the world, for the very establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country is already the first transformation of this kind. But we are saying that until the victory of the proletariat throughout the world, socialist transformations in one country can only be of a preliminary nature, mainly boiling down to negative program(destruction and suppression of the exploiting classes) and partly to a positive program (the first steps towards the revolutionary education of the backward layers of the proletariat, instilling in them the norms of socialist living - but still at a very low level of production, which does not allow us to talk about socialism as a real socio-economic system, and not legal regime with a set of revolutionary decrees).
As for Stalin, his point of view on the question of the possibility of building socialism as a real socio-economic system (and not a legal regime with a set of decrees) changed. For example, in the first editions of the pamphlet “On the Foundations of Leninism” (until the mid-1930s), he argued: “But overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie and establishing the power of the proletariat in one country does not mean ensuring the complete victory of socialism. The main task of socialism is the organization of socialist production - remains to be seen. Is it possible to solve this problem, is it possible to achieve the final victory of socialism in one country without the joint efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is impossible to overthrow the bourgeoisie - the history of our revolution tells us this. the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production the efforts of one country, especially such a peasant country as Russia, are no longer enough; this requires the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries" (I. Stalin “Questions of Leninism”, Partizdat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1935, p.132). But in subsequent publications, Stalin asserted something completely different in this place: “But to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and establish the power of the proletariat in one country does not mean ensuring the complete victory of socialism. Having strengthened its power and leading the peasantry with it, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build socialist society." And Stalin banned the first editions of his own work; they were confiscated everywhere.
And citizen Buntuev, again, following Stalin, is engaged in substituting the concepts of “victory of the socialist revolution” and “building socialism.” Stalinists are such Stalinists. :))

Shamil Buntuev
Herman, “they refused, if only for the simple reason that they saw capitalist development in Russia, the emergence of a proletariat there” - the question of “reactionary Slavs” has nothing to do with it at all, since Engels in his “Eberfeld Speeches” understands “anti-communist nations” not Russians at all, and not Slavs, but “anti-communist nations in general.”

“But we are saying that until the victory of the proletariat throughout the world, socialist transformations in one country can only be of a preliminary nature, mainly reduced to a negative program (destruction and suppression of the exploiting classes) and partly to a positive program (the first steps towards the revolutionary education of the backward layers of the proletariat, instilling in them the norms of socialist communal living - but still at a very low level of production, which does not allow us to talk about socialism as a real socio-economic system, and not a legal regime with a set of revolutionary decrees)" - no fundamental obstacles to building complete socialism in a separate country , i.e. to turning the country into one big “phalanstery”, no.

“The main task of socialism—the organization of socialist production—remains still ahead. Is it possible to solve this problem, is it possible to achieve the final victory of socialism in one country without the joint efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is impossible. To overthrow the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are enough,” about This is what the history of our revolution tells us. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like Russia, are no longer enough; this requires the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries" - and why can’t the proletarian republic itself break out into the world? the number of these most “advanced countries”? Even Trotsky, in “The Revolution Betrayed,” reasoned in this spirit that if the Soviet Union surpasses Western countries in labor productivity, then it will be possible to talk about the construction of socialism in the USSR. In general, Stalin did the right thing by removing the old editions of “Questions of Leninism” from circulation.

“And citizen Buntuev, again, following Stalin, is engaged in replacing the concepts of “victory of the socialist revolution” and “building socialism” - the socialist revolution consists precisely in replacing the capitalist mode of production with a socialist one. If October did not lead to the building of socialism, then it is incorrect to call the October Revolution “socialist revolution.” One can only argue about which class took power in October 1917 (Left committee-consilists, social democrats and all sorts of “Phoenix-Marcanubisists” from the SCS believe that the October Revolution was bourgeois from the very beginning, and the “Leninist” goskapites and the Kapovites consider it proletarian), but it is impossible to talk about the “socialist” revolution. Therefore, leftist committees, even of the “Leninist” persuasion (like the Bordigists), never talk about it. October revolution as about the "Great October Socialist Revolution".

German Akhmetshin
Mr. Buntuev (“Rebel”), Lenin had no intention of building socialism in a single backward Russia, which he wrote about more than once.
There is one “small” obstacle to building socialism in a single country: the fact that this country will be in the chain of imperialist powers, will be forced to trade with them according to their rules, and therefore cannot be socialist. A separate country cannot be socialist, just like a separate city or a separate village.
By definition, nothing good can happen in the fact that Stalin falsified his own words from his work “On the Foundations of Leninism”. Falsification is generally not a good thing.
Mr. Buntuev, no need to lie: Trotsky never wrote in “The Revolution Betrayed” that if the Soviet Union catches up with the Western countries in terms of labor productivity, socialism will be built there - because socialism means, among other things, the withering away of the state , and it is unthinkable under the conditions of a capitalist environment. Nothing can be done, having been innocent fun in the era of Marx, “socialism in one country” in the era of imperialism turned into a counter-revolutionary fascist utopia!
The socialist revolution as a political act is not identical to the complete replacement of the capitalist mode of production with the socialist one. As any diligent schoolchild knows, the main contradiction transition period from capitalism to communism is that the proletarian revolution, unlike the bourgeois revolution, begins with the political victory of the proletariat, and not with the economic victory of the new system over the old. That “the new society in all respects, economic, moral and mental, still retains the birthmarks of the old society from the depths of which it emerged” (K. Marx). But the proletarian revolution and the socialist revolution are essentially the same thing, and neither Marx nor Lenin ever separated these concepts, so don’t engage in your phraseological machinations on this score. To separate the concepts of “proletarian revolution” and “socialist revolution” is to the petty-bourgeois leftist neo-populist Marlen Insarov, and not to Marx and Lenin.

Shamil Buntuev
“Lenin did not intend to build socialism at all in a single backward Russia, which he wrote about more than once” - it is impossible to build socialism in a backward country, but it is possible to overcome backwardness and create a material, technical and cultural base for building socialism, and this base has already been created under Stalin. Lenin was precisely going to build socialism in Russia, which he wrote about more than once:
“To create socialism, you say, civilization is required. Very good. Well, why couldn’t we first create such prerequisites for civilization in our own country as the expulsion of landowners and the expulsion of Russian capitalists, and then begin the movement towards socialism? What books did you read in , that such modifications of the usual historical order are unacceptable or impossible? (About our revolution)
“Our opponents have told us more than once that we are undertaking the reckless task of implanting socialism in an insufficiently cultural country. But they were mistaken in that we started from the wrong end, as the theory (all sorts of pedants) suggested, and that our political and social revolution turned out to be the precursor to that cultural revolution, that cultural revolution, in the face of which we still now stand .
For us now this cultural revolution is enough to become a completely socialist country" (On cooperation)
“Socialism is no longer a question of the distant future, or of some abstract picture, or of some icon. As for icons, we have remained in the old, very bad opinion. We have dragged socialism into daily life and here we must figure it out. This is what is the task of our day, this is what is the task of our era. Let me finish by expressing confidence that, no matter how difficult this task is, no matter how new it is in comparison with our previous task and no matter how many difficulties it causes us, all of us together, not tomorrow, but in a few years, we will solve everything together this task at all costs, so that from NEP Russia there will be socialist Russia" (Speech at the Plenum of the Moscow Council on November 20, 1922)

Shamil Buntuev
German, “There is one “small” obstacle to building socialism in a single country: the fact that this country will be in the chain of imperialist powers, will be forced to trade with them according to their rules and therefore cannot be socialist. A separate country will also not may be socialist, just like a separate city or a separate village" - I have already examined the argument "towards the foreign market" above in the comments, and all the objections boiled down to the fact that "individual communes went bankrupt, and so did the Soviet Union" (i.e., in The collapse of the Soviet Union is to blame precisely on those features that bring the Soviet economy closer to socialism, socialization kills economic efficiency, socialism is uncompetitive, etc.). Yes, in EXTERNAL relations the commune will act as a capitalist enterprise, but in its INTERNAL structure the commune will still be a commune.

Shamil Buntuev
German, “Mr. Buntuev, you don’t have to lie: Trotsky did not write anywhere in The Revolution Betrayed that if the Soviet Union catches up with the Western countries in terms of labor productivity, socialism will be built there” - Trotsky deduced the absence of socialism in the USSR precisely from a lower level of labor productivity, and productive forces in general, than in the West, and not from the nature of production relations, property relations. Trotsky recognized that property relations in the USSR correspond to socialism.

“We do not yet have, of course, complete communism,” says the current official Soviet doctrine, but we have already achieved socialism, that is, the lowest stage of communism.” Evidence is given of the dominance of state trusts in industry, of collective farms in agriculture, state and cooperative enterprises - in trade. At first glance, there appears to be a complete coincidence with Marx's a priori - and therefore hypothetical - scheme. But precisely from the point of view of Marxism, the question is not at all limited to forms of ownership, regardless of the achieved labor productivity. By the lowest stage of communism, Marx, in any case, understood a society that, in its economic development, from the very beginning stands above the most advanced capitalism. Theoretically, such a statement is impeccable, because communism taken on a global scale, even in its first, initial stage, means a higher stage of development compared to bourgeois society. Moreover, Marx expected that the socialist revolution would be started by a Frenchman, a German would continue it, and an Englishman would finish it; as for the Russian, he remained in the distant rearguard. Meanwhile, the order was actually overturned. Anyone who now tries to mechanically apply Marx’s universal-historical concept to the particular case of the USSR, at this stage of its development, immediately becomes entangled in hopeless contradictions.

Russia was not the strongest, but weakest link in the chain of capitalism. Current USSR does not rise above the world level of economy, but only catches up with the capitalist countries. If the society that should have been formed on the basis of the socialization of the productive forces of the most advanced capitalism for its era was called by Marx the lowest stage of communism, then this definition clearly does not fit the Soviet Union, which today is still much poorer in technology, life goods and culture than capitalist countries. It would be more correct, therefore, to call the current Soviet regime, in all its contradictions, not socialist, but preparatory or transitional from capitalism to socialism.

There is not a drop of pedantry in this concern for terminological accuracy. The strength and stability of regimes are ultimately determined by the relative productivity of labor. A socialized economy, technically superior to capitalism, would be truly secure in its socialist development certainly, so to speak, automatically, which, unfortunately, in no case can still be said about the Soviet economy"

“Regarding the first statements about “complete victory,” the opposition objected: one cannot limit oneself to socio-legal forms of relations, moreover, immature, contradictory, and still very unstable in agriculture, abstracting from the main criterion: the level of productive forces. The legal forms themselves receive a significantly different social content in depending on the height of technology: “law can never be higher than the economic system and the cultural development of society determined by it” (Marx). the latest achievements American technology, transferred to all sectors of the economy - this is already the first stage of socialism. Soviet forms with low labor productivity only mean transitional regime, whose fate has not yet been finally weighed by history"
http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl001.htm

Shamil Buntuev
German, “As any diligent schoolchild knows, the main contradiction of the transition period from capitalism to communism is that the proletarian revolution, unlike the bourgeois revolution, begins with the political victory of the proletariat, and not with the economic victory of the new system over the old” - that’s what the whole point is that the political revolution (the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat) is only the BEGINNING, the FIRST STEP of the socialist revolution, and not yet the whole revolution. To identify the “victory of the socialist revolution” with the mere political victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie is the same as identifying victory in an individual battle with victory in a war. Marx, back in 1843, called a political revolution a “partial revolution” (“What is a partial, only political revolution based on? On the fact that a part of civil society emancipates itself and achieves general domination, on the fact that a certain class, based on its special situation, undertakes the emancipation of the entire society" - Towards a critique of Hegel's philosophy of law). "Socialism" is social order, and the socialist revolution by its nature must take on the character of a SOCIAL revolution. Let’s say the proletariat took power, held it for a while, without changing anything in the economy, and eventually gave power back to the bourgeoisie. And where is the “socialist revolution” here? We can only talk about the ATTEMPT of revolution (“thanks to grandfather for the attempt,” as the Vlasovites say), but not about the revolution itself.

German Akhmetshin
Shamil, there is no need to play on words. By the 1970s, the USSR had basically caught up with Western countries not only in labor productivity, but even in per capita food consumption (and in some areas even surpassed them!). And what? Was socialism built in the USSR? Exactly when Brezhnev and Suslov proclaimed the construction of “developed socialism” in the USSR?! The “theory” of “socialism in one country” naturally leads to the recognition of Brezhnev’s “theory” of “developed socialism.”
To build socialism, it is not enough to CAPTURE the development of capitalist countries in all respects. To do this, you still need to DISTILL them. And this is simply impossible in conditions when the country of the proletarian dictatorship is limited in funds, cut off from many markets, forced in its foreign economic activity to take into account the rules of the capitalist encirclement, and also with the fact that the capitalist encirclement simply will not allow the proletarian country to become " surpass" the level of its development - and, in order to prevent this distillation, will keep the victorious proletariat of this country in a state of arms race, thus forcing it to slow down the production of consumer goods.

German Akhmetshin
As for Lenin, he did not intend to build socialism in a single country. He was only going to begin in Russia the creation of the foundations for the construction of socialism, and he associated the possibility of building socialism in this backward country exclusively with the victory of the proletarian revolution in European countries.

German Akhmetshin
The rebel simply voiced the catechism of fascism: “Yes, in EXTERNAL relations the commune will act as a capitalist enterprise, but in its INTERNAL structure the commune will still be a commune.” The question is, why then make a socialist revolution all over the world if this “commune” will develop successfully anyway? And besides, this “commune”, carried away by capitalist competition in the world market, will inevitably degenerate into an ordinary capitalist enterprise. For a “commune” cannot be socialist inside and capitalist outside - it can be either capitalist (both inside and outside) or socialist (both inside and outside). So a fascist (a fascist in the most serious - economic - sense of the word!) Buntuev will not be able to replace Leninism with social-imperialism. And for the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was not the “socialist” principles that were to blame, which by that time simply did not spend the night there, but the usual crisis of Soviet feudal capitalism (the crisis of overproduction, when the USSR threw so many weapons and oil onto the world market that it was unable to swallow them !), inevitable under any national capitalism, so don’t put me in the same category as liberal critics USSR - because my criticism of the USSR has nothing in common with their criticism.
As for the October Revolution, both Lenin and Stalin called it a socialist revolution - if only because it prepared the most important condition to create the foundations of socialism - the power of the proletariat.

Shamil Buntuev
German, “By the 1970s, the USSR had basically caught up with Western countries not only in labor productivity, but even in per capita food consumption (and in some areas even surpassed them!). So what? Socialism was built in the USSR? Exactly when Brezhnev and Suslov proclaimed the construction of “developed socialism” in the USSR?!” - if the USSR had canceled commodity-money relations, the OGAS project has been implemented, then yes, one could talk about building socialism in the USSR. And according to Trotsky’s formula (Soviet forms of ownership + the latest technology= socialism) there was socialism in the USSR without the “if”.

“To build socialism, it is not enough to CATCH up the development of capitalist countries in all indicators. To do this, you also need to OVERSTAND them. And this is simply impossible in conditions when the country of the proletarian dictatorship is limited in funds, cut off from many markets, and is forced in its foreign economic activity to take into account the rules of capitalist environment, and also with the fact that the capitalist environment simply will not allow the proletarian country to begin to “overtake” the level of its development - and, in order to prevent this overtaking, will keep the victorious proletariat of this country in a state of arms race, thus forcing it to slow down production of consumer goods" - if the capitalist world is confronted by more than one, isolated socialist country, and the commonwealth of such countries (like the Warsaw/CMEA), then it will be so easy for the capitalists to “sink” the economy of socialism. In addition, we are all considering a situation in which a backward proletarian republic is opposed to developed capitalist countries. What if a socialist revolution occurs in the most powerful capitalist country in the world, which already surpasses all other countries economically, militarily, and in other respects? Wouldn't such a country be able to build socialism?

Shamil Buntuev
German, “As for Lenin, he did not intend to build socialism in a single country. He only intended to begin in Russia the creation of the foundations for the construction of socialism, and he associated the possibility of building socialism in this backward country exclusively with the victory of the proletarian revolution in European countries” - Lenin, towards the end of his life, when it became clear to him that the revolution was delayed in Western countries, set a course for building socialism in Russia separately, and I have given quotes explaining the position of the late Lenin. Valentinov in his book “Lenin’s Heirs” points out that in fact the course towards building socialism for “separate” Russia was proclaimed not in the article “On the slogan of the United States of Europe”, but in “On Cooperation”. As Valentinov notes, “the articles dictated by Lenin in 1923 were initially unsuccessful among the party leaders” and were either ignored or misunderstood. Even Stalin, in the first version of “On the Foundations of Leninism,” did not take into account Lenin’s conclusions, but later corrected his mistake: “It is remarkable that the General Secretary of the Party ignores, clearly does not attach importance to Lenin’s article on cooperation. Moreover: in fact, he opposes Lenin, categorically declaring that it is impossible to build socialism in one country. A few months later, horrified by his anti-Leninism and fall into heresy, which was especially grave in his position as the general secretary of the party, the keeper of Lenin’s “testaments,” Stalin rushed to hush up his mistake in the subsequent edition of his pamphlet “On the Fundamentals.” Leninism", included in the collection "Questions of Leninism", anti-Leninist words have already been thrown out, heretical phrases have been falsified with various inserts, allowing one to think that Stalin never deviated from Lenin's thoughts" http://www.lib.ru/HISTORY/FELSHTINSKY/f16. txt Unlike Trotsky, who in his criticism of “socialism in a single country” acted as an anti-Leninist (but even in “The Revolution Betrayed” he “reluctantly” had to admit the possibility of building socialism in the USSR, provided that the USSR “catch up and overtake America "). But it would be wrong to derive the theory of “socialism in a single country” solely from the article “On Cooperation,” since even in the article “On the slogan “United States of Europe,” Lenin unambiguously allowed for the possibility of building socialism in a single country. Trotskyists and Goskapists want to portray the matter as if Lenin in this article understood by “victory of socialism” only the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In fact, Lenin directly writes about the “organization of socialist production,” and this completely coincides with the position of Engels, both early (Eberfeld Speeches) and late (Letter to Otto Benigk). But in separate Russia, Lenin still considered the construction of socialism impossible due to its economic and cultural backwardness.

Shamil Buntuev
Herman, “The rebel simply voiced the catechism of fascism” - well, where is fascism here? Fascism is an anti-democratic form of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, an attempt by the bourgeoisie to forcibly “unite” antagonistic classes, to “extinguish” the class struggle. Socialism in a single country is the opposite of fascism, since the construction of socialism does not imply “reconciliation” or “unity” of classes, but their destruction, the creation of a class-homogeneous society, albeit so far only on a national scale.

“For a “commune” cannot be socialist inside and capitalist outside - it can be either capitalist (both inside and outside) or socialist (both inside and outside)" - if the inside of the commune is destroyed private property, the opposite of classes, it cannot, by definition, be “capitalist internally,” even if it trades with openly capitalist enterprises.

“And besides, this “commune”, carried away by capitalist competition in the world market, will inevitably degenerate into an ordinary capitalist enterprise” - whether it will degenerate or not, and how soon it will degenerate, these are separate questions. Everything will depend on how badly capitalism has rotted and how ready the proletariat is to seize power. If there are conditions for a world revolution, then socialism will embrace more and more countries, and there will be more and more communes. Be that as it may, world socialism/communism will consist precisely of such individual, national communes, which will integrate with each other, first on a regional and then on a global scale.

"As for the October Revolution, both Lenin and Stalin called it a socialist revolution - if only because it prepared the most important condition for creating the foundations of socialism - the power of the proletariat" - Lenin and Stalin spoke of the October Revolution as a "socialist revolution" because that they believed that this revolution would lead to the construction of socialism. That is, history must resolve disputes about the nature of the revolution. And since the revolutionary era ended with the victory of the bourgeoisie, we have the right to say that the socialist revolution did not take place.

Building socialism in one single country

The discussion about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country began in the mid-1920s. Until 1924, this issue was not raised by anyone in the party. The opinion about the victory of the socialist revolution in several advanced countries as a necessary condition for the victory of socialism in the USSR was shared by all theorists and ideologists of the RCP (b). It is known that Lenin always connected the development of Russia with international events: “The complete victory of the socialist revolution,” he said in November 1918, “is unthinkable in one country, but requires the most active cooperation of at least several advanced countries, to which We cannot include Russia." This was the opinion with some variations until the early 1920s. was considered generally accepted among the Bolsheviks, despite the defeat of the Communists in Germany. In May 1924, Stalin wrote in his pamphlet “On the Foundations of Leninism” that overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie and establishing the power of the proletariat in one country does not mean ensuring the complete victory of socialism. For the final victory of socialism,” he continued, “the efforts of one country, especially a peasant one like Russia, are not enough; This requires the efforts of “the proletarians of several advanced countries.” Thus, the entire theoretical tradition of the Bolsheviks was aimed at considering their revolution as part of the international revolutionary process.
One of the first to express the exact opposite opinion was the “favorite of the party” N.I. Bukharin. In February 1924, speaking on the issue of building socialism, he noted that he was talking about “one, separate country.” Proclaiming this thesis, Bukharin understood by it a more cautious attitude towards the peasantry, an alliance with the countryside and a balanced pace on the issue of industrialization. Bukharin criticized international social democracy, which believed that in Russia there is a “colossal numerical superiority of the peasantry,” and the proletariat “swims like a fly in the peasant’s milk, and this proletariat-fly, placed in front of the elephant-peasant, cannot do anything.” communist revolution." At the end of 1924, Stalin also changed his opinion on this issue. He no longer denied the possibility of building socialism in the USSR in the absence of victorious socialist revolutions in the West. The logic of the fight against Trotskyism required criticism of the “capitulators” and “defeatists.” In April 1925, at the XIV Conference of the RCP(b), a new theoretical and political position was formalized. Stalin, citing a number of Lenin's statements from different years, emphasized that it was Lenin, and not anyone else, who discovered the truth about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country.
Stalin and Bukharin, having become the main theoreticians of the proclaimed slogan, divided this issue into two parts. The essence of the first of them was that the final victory of socialism in the USSR as “a complete guarantee against the restoration of capitalist orders” could not be achieved without the victory of the socialist revolution in other countries. The second part of the question was supported by Lenin’s quotes taken out of context and contained the conclusion that the complete victory of socialism could be achieved without corresponding revolutions in the West.
Trotsky saw the true meaning of the theory about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country in the desire of the Soviet party and state bureaucracy to protect its dominant position in the country and the international communist movement. For these purposes, it was beneficial for her to call in advance socialism everything that is happening and will happen within the country, regardless of what happens outside its borders.
In 1926-1927 the question of the possibility of the victory of socialism in one particular country became a key area of ​​theoretical disagreement within the party.
Stalin accused Trotsky of allegedly underestimating the potential capabilities of the peasantry and opposing the Leninist concept of the union of workers and working peasants as the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution,” formulated by him at the beginning of the 20th century, was criticized. Then Trotsky wrote that the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia, relying only on its own resources, is impossible, since “the working class will inevitably be crushed by the counter-revolution at the moment when the peasantry turns its back on it.” For such a formulation of the issue, the Stalin-Bukharin bloc accused the opposition of lack of faith in the victory of socialist construction and pessimism. Trotsky's statements that the theory of "permanent revolution" has no relation to the internal party discussion and that he considers this issue to have long been written off in the archives did not stop Stalin. He attacked the opposition again and again, accusing it of “lack of faith” in the internal forces of the revolution.