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p The socialist organisation of labour must be subordinated to the main aims and the principal tasks of socialist production. The mere transfer of capitalist property to the people does not signify 115 the attainment of these aims. Lenin pointed out that the socialisation of production in practice requires more than the resolve to confiscate capitalist property. In The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, where he elaborates the programme of socialist construction, Lenin gave as the principal task "the introduction of the strictest and universal accounting and control of the production and distribution of goods, raising the productivity of labour and socialising production in prac- tice".  [115•1 

p Thus, socialising production in practice means subordinating production to the interests and needs of society and creating the conditions for their fullest satisfaction. The main task in this is raising the productivity of labour.

p "In every socialist revolution,” Lenin wrote, "after the proletariat has solved the problem of capturing power, and to the extent that the task of expropriating the expropriators and suppressing their resistance has been carried out in the main, there necessarily comes to the forefront the fundamental task of creating a social system superior to capitalism, namely, raising the productivity of labour, and in this connection (and for this purpose) securing better organisation of labour."  [115•2 

p On the basis of the new relations of production, it is possible and necessary to create the productive forces corresponding to the new mode of production and guaranteeing a higher productivity of labour than in former societies.

p These propositions of Lenin’s, based on the entire experience of human history, were directed against anti-Marxists who presented matters as if the new mode of production could come into existence only when there were fully developed productive forces present corresponding to it, and who therefore regarded the October Revolution as an arbitrary act out of conformity with the laws of history. But the experience of history showed that capitalism too had come into existence at a time when there were enterprises employing only or mostly manual labour.

p Raising the productivity of labour is the central economic question facing a socialist society, and Marxism-Leninism provides the theoretical basis for dealing with it. Lenin devotes a number of important works to this question. The steady growth of labour productivity is the basic law of the socialist mode of 116 production because it means the constant improvement of production that is indispensable to socialism. The objective need for the steady growth of labour productivity arises from the need of society to develop and satisfy more and more completely the requirements of the people. It was only by raising labour productivity that the young Soviet Republic was able to ensure the victory of the socialist forms of labour over private capitalist forms. And it is now the most important factor in the world competition between capitalism and socialism, and in the struggle for the victory of communism.

p "Communism is the higher productivity of labour—compared with that existing under capitalism—of voluntary, class-conscious and united workers employing advanced techniques,” said Lenin.  [116•1 

p Increasing the productivity of labour necessitated the construction of a material basis of heavy industry together with the raising of the educational and cultural standards of the population; it also called for strict labour discipline and the steady improvement of the organisation of labour.

p The victory of socialism presupposes the creation of new productive forces, corresponding to the socialist relations of production throughout the whole of the economy. Without the building of heavy industry, without an industry based on advanced technology, there could have been no victory for socialism. "A large-= scale machine industry capable of reorganising agriculture is the only material basis that is possible for socialism,” Lenin wrote.  [116•2 

p Without the growth of heavy industry the role of the working class could not have grown as quickly. In the concrete Russian conditions that existed on the eve of the October Revolution, the general level of industrial development was sufficient for the creation of a socialist industry, but it was nothing like sufficient for the reorganisation of the whole of the economy on the basis of the most up-to-date technology and for the socialising of labour throughout the national economy, i.e., for the complete victory of socialism. Lenin’s plan for socialist construction envisaged the socialist industrialisation of the country as the only possible basis for co-operation in agriculture and for carrying through the cultural revolution.

p Since the USSR was the only country in the world building socialism, and since it was surrounded by capitalist states, it was 117 impossible not to take into consideration the economic laws operating in those states. The effect of the operation of these laws is such that any backward country that remains backward inevitably becomes a prey of imperialism.

p That was why, having in mind the backwardness of Russia, the Russia of the landowners and the bourgeoisie, Lenin wrote even before the revolution that the new Russia would perish if she did not go full steam ahead from the very start. The proletariat had to solve an historical task which none of the previous ruling classes had been able to solve or even to set correctly, that is, the task of eliminating the technical and economic backwardness of the country. That was the only thing that could save the young Soviet land from national catastrophe and create the conditions for the victory of socialism.

p Lenin repeatedly stressed that unless a heavy industry were built in the Soviet Republic it would perish not only as a socialist country but also as an independent country. The overthrow of the exploiters and the transfer of large-scale industry to the people made it possible to abolish the old Russia’s economic and technical backwardness. The plan for socialist industrialisation which Lenin worked out was based on his summing up of the entire experience of world development and on his knowledge of the economic laws of socialism, laws that made possible and indeed demanded the taking of the new, unblazcd path of industrialisation.

p Lenin’s theory of socialist industrialisation took account of and was based on the enormous advantages of the Soviet economy, which made it possible in the shortest historical period to overcome the country’s backwardness and build the material basis of socialism.

p Lenin regarded the following as the necessary political conditions for guaranteeing the success of socialist industrialisation: the strengthening of the alliance between the working class and the working peasants, maintaining the confidence of the peasants in the working class, and retaining the workers’ leading role in relation to the peasantry. The greater the assistance rendered by the working class to the peasants with means of production, the greater the faith of the peasants in the working class. Peasants need the industrial produce of the cities and if the workers, as their comrades, supply them with the implements of work and the cultural facilities, etc., that they require, then they are placed in a position to express their appreciation of this assistance in practice.

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p Only a decisive upsurge in the level of the productive forces could have consolidated the new relations of production and ensured the complete victory of socialist property.

p The acknowledgement of the priority of production arises from the application of the principle of historicity, which indicates that the progress of the productive forces under the new production relations leads to the further development and improvement of these relations. The method of materialist dialectics requires the application of the principle of historicity when analysing the laws of development of socialist relations.

p Socialist property could not emerge at once in its most developed form. The way Lenin put the question of socialising production in practice showed that he thought that ownership by the whole people only developed with the growth of the productive forces. Lenin said that property of the whole people could not emerge at once throughout the economy and that a number of transitional forms of property were inevitable, the forms being related to the level of the forces of production and to the whole complicated process of the transformation of society.

p But although he pointed out that the transference of the commanding heights of the economy to the working class was one of the first necessary steps of the proletarian revolution, Lenin did not hold that all capitalist enterprises should become socialist ones overnight. His great merit lay in his treatment of the question of state capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat which he regarded as a transitional step aimed at the transformation of capitalist concerns into socialist ones.

p Lenin showed that there are important points of difference between state capitalism under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and under the dictatorship of the proletariat. State capitalism under bourgeois rule represents the collective property of the capitalist class as a whole. The division of society into two classes, the exploiting class and the exploited class, remains; while under the rule of the proletariat, state capitalism is capitalism restricted and used by the state power of the proletariat in the interests of the socialist transformation of the economy. The working class is the ruling class controlling and restricting the capitalist enterprises, directing their activities for the good of socialism, in the interests of the working people.

p Lenin also attached great importance to state capitalism as a form of economy which, because of its high technical organisation, can be brought under control more easily than the small scattered 119 economy that is the basis of spontaneity in the transitional economy.

p State-capitalist enterprises never became very widespread in the USSR, because of the particularly sharp class struggles which developed into the civil war. But in some other countries which have taken the socialist road, the forms of state capitalism have been and are still used more widely.

p State capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat is one of the forms of the peaceful transition from the capitalist economy to the socialist economy.

p The question of socialist property evolving as a result of small farms going through a number of intermediate economic forms was of great theoretical and practical importance. In this connection, Lenin always spoke first of all of the need to retain and strengthen the political and economic alliance of the working class and the peasantry led by the working class as the main condition for the successful construction of socialism.

p Lenin solved the question of land nationalisation in the conditions that prevailed in Russia at the time, and showed that one of the first decrees of the Soviet Government—the Decree on Land—meant the nationalisation of the land. This made it possible to bring the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia to a successful conclusion, and to create the most favourable opportunities in farming for making the transition to socialism. Lenin noted that Communist Parties in other countries, when they worked out their agrarian programmes, should solve the question of landed property according to the concrete conditions of landownership and class relations in the country concerned. However, he put forward the confiscation of the land of big landowners as a general and unconditional demand applicable to all countries.  [119•1 

p As for small farmers, Lenin repeatedly pointed out that even in a complete socialist revolution, socialists would not and could not expropriate them. To attempt such expropriation could only result in the collapse of proletarian rule because it was objectively impossible. Lenin taught that small commodity producers should not be crushed. Socialists must get along with them, and only change and reform them by means of long, slow and careful organisational work.

p At the same time Lenin explained that in the process of socialist construction it is necessary to liquidate the exploiting 120 classes and to reconstruct the whole of the national economy. Socialist construction in the towns alone is not, therefore, possible. If a small farm economy continues to exist after the socialist revolution, this means that there remains "an extremely broad and very sound, deep-rooted basis for capitalism, a basis on which capitalism persists or arises anew in a bitter struggle against communism".  [120•1 

p A small farm economy is of the most unprofitable and backward kind, making it impossible to reach the high levels of labour productivity necessary for the abundant supply of all the population with food and other articles of consumption, and industry with raw materials. A small farm economy is not only incapable of providing for the steady improvement of the welfare of the mass of farmers, but it is an extremely unstable form of economy leading finally to the ruin of very many farmers.

p The specific paths of socialist development which small farming should take to ensure close economic links between socialist industry and agriculture, are one of the most important problems in the political economy of socialism.

p Lenin rejected all the attempts of the enemies of the revolution to eliminate small farming by force. He showed both the theoretical inconsistency of such attempts and how dangerous they were politically. But Lenin also realised that the existence of small farming for a certain period of time after the revolution meant, inevitably, a struggle between the socialist and capitalist elements in the peasantry and between the socialist and the capitalist paths of development in agriculture.

p In a number of his works, including Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, A Great Beginning and others, Lenin pointed out that the small farmer possesses two souls—the soul of the toiler and the soul of the tradesman. The proletariat’s task is to reach the toiler in him, to attract him to its side and to struggle against those tendencies which arouse in him the spirit of trade and speculation. Objectively, the proletariat has all the necessary conditions for success, since it and the great bulk of the peasantry have basic interests in common.

p In developing Marxist theory, Lenin worked out his well-= known plan for co-operation as a means of transforming small farming into large-scale socialist agriculture. Marx and Engcls, 121 too, dealt with the need, after the establishing of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to render assistance to the peasantry in its transition to collective methods of running the economy. They said that the working class ought to make great material sacrifices in this respect, to be generous to the peasantry. These ideas were buried in oblivion by the leaders of the Second International, while Lenin defended and developed them as vital points of Marxist doctrine. He showed the importance of co-= operative farming as the chief means of achieving the socialist transformation of agriculture.

p Some time after the October Revolution in Russia, some members of the Communist Party suggested nationalising the farmers’ co-operatives because it turned out that there were a lot of kulak elements in them. Lenin criticised such suggestions as ridiculous, harmful and unrealistic. Even in the early years of Soviet power he had insisted on establishing a link between the consumers’ co-operatives and the producers’ co-operatives in order to foster the growth of the quantity of agricultural goods produced.

p After the victorious conclusion of the Civil War, on the basis of all the experience of socialist construction that had then been accumulated, Lenin worked out a detailed plan for putting the farms on the road to socialism through co-operation. In his article "The Tax in Kind”, he still regarded co-operation as a form of state capitalism, but later, having taken into account the change in the strength and influence of the socialist sector in the economy, together with the possibility of ensuring the unity of agriculture and socialist industrial production, he came to the conclusion that co-operation had become a socialist economic form. It was his historical approach to the nature of co-operation that led Lenin to this extremely important result. Then in his article "On Co-operation”, he developed his ideas on the gradual transition of the peasants to socialism, suggesting concrete ways of making the transition.

p Lenin studied the question of the social nature of co-operation in detail. Co-operative enterprises under capitalism inevitably merge with the capitalist system as a whole and become collective capitalist enterprises. But when the most decisive means of production belong to the whole of society, that is, to the socialist state, co-operative enterprises do not differ from socialist ones. Lenin had in mind that industry, as the leading and decisive branch of production making the implements and means of production, is property belonging to the whole nation, and that a 122 system of advanced co-operators, in the conditions when such property prevails, is socialist in character. The brilliant simplicity of Lenin’s plan of co-operation lies in the fact that it begins with the peasants’ material interests. His idea is not to force the peasant to follow the path of socialism, but to contrive to appeal to his material interests—in order to steer him gradually onto the road of large-scale collective farming, at the same time providing collective farms with industrial means of production by sending them tractors, machines, etc. Lenin’s plan of co-operation is based on the need for close links between town and country, both in trade and production. The implementation of this plan called for strengthening the alliance of the workers with the poor and middle peasants and for fighting the kulaks.

p Lenin’s plan for transforming small peasant property into socialist property was closely linked to the plan for building the material and technical basis of socialism and providing agriculture with heavy machinery. According to Lenin, co-operation is not merely a transitional form on the road to socialism, but in a socialist economy, it is, like property belonging to the whole of society, a form of socialist property.

p Lenin also thought that after the victory of the socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries where there were large farms they should be retained and run along the lines of Soviet farms. However, he warned against the automatic copying of the Soviet model. He considered that when introducing co-= operation in different countries a concrete approach should be adopted, and that in a number of cases part of the land belonging to big farms may be handed over to small and middle peasants.  [122•1 

p Before the revolution, Lenin wrote: "Capitalism breaks for all time the ties between agriculture and industry, but at the same time, through its highest development, it prepares new elements of those ties, a union between industry and agriculture based on the conscious application of science and the concentration of collective labour."  [122•2 

Lenin’s deep understanding of the process of development of socialism thus enabled him to present in detail the characteristic features of the period of transition to socialism.