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p To steadily improve and consistently develop the Leninist principles of socialist economic management is to strengthen and augment the power of socialism. In the practice of socialist construction our people have devised new methods of running the economy hitherto unknown to history and differing completely from the methods of capitalist management. Socialist methods of management did not arise by accident, by people’s arbitrary choice. Their appearance and development were conditioned by society’s social structure, by the operation of its economic laws. Lenin once said that "under the bourgeois system, business matters were managed by private owners and not by state agencies; but now, business matters are our common concern. These are the politics that interest us most”.  [252•* 

p What then is it that the revisionist theoreticians do not like in our methods of running the economy and against which they direct the main weight of their guns? It appears that what doesn’t suit their taste is the Leninist principle of democratic centralism in the management of the economy. Pointing to the fact that the management of socialist production is concentrated in the hands of the Soviet state and that it plays the leading role in economic development, these pseudo-theoreticians talk themselves into the absurd conclusion that our system is "state capitalism”.

Talk about new times and old tunes! Leninists heard these tunes from the so-called Workers’ Opposition, from

253 the Trotskyists, and from other unfriends of Marxism- Leninism. These tunes are so old that they came in for devastating criticism by the founders of scientific communism. During the most acute period of struggle against the petty-bourgeois anarchistic trends Engels stressed that after the social revolution would have overthrown the capitalists and the means of production would have become the collective property of the working class the role of large-scale production, the role of the state and the authority of its leaders would be enhanced. "Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry," Engels wrote, "is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself... .”  [253•* 

p The principle of democratic centralism, which is the basic principle of socialist economic management, follows from the very nature of the Soviet system, of socialist economics. It stands for a combination of centralised, planned leadership of the economy on the part of the Soviet state and the initiative of the labour millions in town and country. In emphasising, during the early days of Soviet rule, the need for ensuring a balanced and integrated development of the economy, Lenin at the same time pointed out that "centralism, understood in a truly democratic sense, presupposes the possibility, created for the first time in history, of a full and unhampered development not only of specific local features, but also of local inventiveness, local initiative, of diverse ways, methods and means of progress to the common goal".”  [253•** 

p Life itself, practice and experience have confirmed with absolute accuracy the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist postulate to the effect that socialist social property requires integrated, balanced planning and the highest organisation of the entire economic machinery on a country-wide scale. Therefore, to deny the principle of democratic centralism under conditions of socialist management is to assist in implanting capitalist methods of business management, to turn one’s back on the pressing needs of the working class.

p In recent years the Party and the Government have taken a number of measures to perfect the methods of management of the economy and improve the business of planning 254 and of providing material and moral incentives for social labour. These measures are reflected in the decisions of the 23rd and 24th Congresses of the Party and plenary meetings of the C.P.S.U.’s Central Committee and in the economic reform which is now being implemented. The Party’s line in the sphere of economic management is aimed, not at destroying, undoing and discarding the experience that has been accumulated, but to use it to steadily and consistently develop, improve and refine the existing and time-tested principles, methods and forms of business management, bearing in mind that the building of communism’s economic basis is a most difficult and most complicated job that will take a long time.

p In improving and perfecting the practice of state planning the Party strictly adheres to the Leninist line of democratic centralism. With the main economic levers kept in the hands of the state, it endeavours at the same time to give wider powers to the Union republics, to the ministries in charge of the various industries, and to the managers of enterprises, and to promote the greatest possible local initiative and creative activity of the masses. This it is that propels the economic machinery of socialism in the right direction and makes for a balanced, well-coordinated and highly effectual system of social production.

p Obviously, control of such a complex economic machinery under conditions of gigantic development of the productive forces is possible only on a scientific basis and given available skilled and highly educated cadres. One of the complex problems of centralised planning of the socialist economy is that of maintaining a proper balance between the branches and spheres of the national economy and preventing any imbalance. Today, as in the past, this major task is kept constantly in the field of vision of the planning agencies and other state and Party bodies.

p As a result of the consistent implementation of the Party’s Leninist general line a powerful industry has been set up in our country and together with it there has grown up an army of skilled personnel—organisers, specialists and workers. At the present stage of development and given the existing powerful material and technical base, we are able, without any special increase of capital investments in new construction, to ensure a steady and considerable growth in production by making better use of productive capacities, 255 by a more rational organisation and the widest application of scientific achievements to the sphere of material production.

p One important source of such economy is the wide, organised and systematic introduction of progressive experience, the better organisation of social labour and improved methods of management. In this respect a tremendous role is assigned to such vital links as scientific and technological production propaganda and information, which, in the system of scientific and technological progress, are the strongest and most effective levers. The Party’s basic economic policy implies a correct understanding and practical implementation of the Leninist principle of material and moral incentives for every individual worker and for every industrial community at socialist enterprises in raising the productivity of labour and the yield of production.

p To be sure, Marxist-Leninist science has advanced considerably both as regards knowledge of the objective economic laws of socialism and the evolvement of new principles, forms and methods of socialist management. Nevertheless, science still faces that most acute and cardinal problem of our day—the study, assimilation and theoretical generalisation of the vast experience of socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. and all the socialist countries, the profound study of the objective laws of development both in each separate country that is building socialism and in the world socialist system as a whole. It should always be borne in mind that throughout the development of MarxismLeninism the bourgeoisie never gave up hope of being able, directly or through its agents in the labour movement, to emasculate Marxism of its creative, revolutionising essence, to replace or dilute it with all kinds of quasi-scientific, anarcho-syndicalistic and other petty-bourgeois views.

p Bourgeois ideologues in our day are redoubling their efforts to insinuate capitalist methods of management into the socialist system by means of the famous concepts of convergence and pluralism. Under the mask of "different ways of building socialism" bourgeois apologists are trying to push socialist development from its Leninist path. Under these circumstances, the theoretical formulation of the question concerning the ways of building socialism and the transition from socialism to communism and the exposure of the various distortions of the Marxist-Leninist teaching in 256 the sphere of socialist management assume paramount importance. In this connection the need arises for examining, if only in brief outline, the so-called road of national communism, which is now being boosted as a challenge to the experience of socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. and other socialist countries.

p What, then, does the concept of "national communism" consist in? The concept itself is no new discovery, but under the new conditions, that is, the conditions created by the world socialist system, it first appeared upon the scene in the early fifties. At first it was more advertised than argued. Then the phraseology gradually shaped itself into a doctrine of "national communism". Even this nebulous amalgam, however, failed to throw light on the matter, and it took years for this fanciful doctrine to be clarified. Today the idea of "national communism" has been deciphered as " selfgoverning socialism" based on "associations of producers". The “new” proved to be merely a rehash of the Lassallean anarcho-syndicalist idea of "labour self-government" or "industrial democracy”.

p What emerged from this with full clarity was that in the so-called producers’ associations a very old question had been touched upon to which an answer had long been given by the practice of socialist construction. The idea of moving towards the new social order by means of “producers’ associations" dates back to the Utopian socialists. They failed to see that the development of industry led to the creation of large-scale production and its replacement by a still bigger production, to concentration and centralisation.

p Marxists-Leninists consider that in present-day conditions socialist social production can only be run on the scientific principles of democratic centralism and that only a socialist state, acting on behalf of the working classes, can cope with such a task. Therefore a vital function of the socialist state is that of business organiser. Lenin wrote that "the transformation of the whole of the state economic mechanism into a single huge machine, into an economic organism that will work in such a way as to enable hundreds of millions of people to be guided by a single plan—such was the enormous organisational problem that rested on our shoulders”.  [256•* 

p It is quite obvious that an attempt to manage modern 257 social production in a socialist country by means of " associations of producers" at separate factories and mills is out of the question. Such management would inevitably lead to loss of state scope and national perspective. Socialism without large-scale centralised industry representing the last word in science and technology, without centralised management on the part of the socialist state, is simply impracticable.

p The role of the socialist state in the management of social production cannot be disputed without renouncing socialism. Of course, if any state goes against the objective laws of development of the economy and uses its strength to fragmentise modern industry into "associations of producers", obviously nothing good can come of this for socialism. It is quite another thing if a socialist state is guided by science and experience; in such a case the building of a complete socialist system will really be achieved. Lenin has this to say on this score: "The building of communism undoubtedly requires the greatest possible and most strict centralisation of labour on a nation-wide scale, and this presumes overcoming the scattering and disunity of workers, by trades and locally, which was one of the sources of capital’s strength and labour’s weakness.”  [257•* 

p These words of Lenin contain another, very important, thought which needs to be specially underlined. The fragmentation and scattered condition of a single productive and economic mechanism inevitably disunites, weakens and disorganises the working class, while balanced centralisation combined with democratisation gives it unheard-of strength of organisation and cohesion and furthers the growth of its self-consciousness. Our Party strives to have every worker, every person in the socialist land, think in terms of the state at large, and act like a statesman who understands the interests of the working class and all the working people of the country as a whole. It can be said without exaggeration that in this respect we have achieved colossal successes and we are proud of them.

p The experience of socialist construction has shown that if the state planning principle of the country’s economy is weakened uncontrolled market conditions inevitably set in. And if the working class is broken up into "associations of 258 producers" and these associations inevitably become participants in the competitive struggle of an uncontrolled market, this will lead to the weakening of the working class and cultivate in the industrial community traits of narrowmindedness and exclusiveness. The working class thus fragmented into producers’ associations begins to have other interests. Such is the inescapable consequence of renunciation of the leading role of the socialist state in the economic sphere. Experiments of this kind do not strengthen the leading role of the working class in the country’s economic development, but weaken it.

p When we speak of the development of socialist democracy we do not by any means wish to offer it as an alternative to centralisation. In the conditions of socialist society drawing a line between centralism and democratism is meaningless. Democratic centralism is a tested Marxist-Leninist principle of economic management. Our Party during Lenin’s lifetime irrevocably condemned the attacks of the Workers’ Opposition against the principle of democratic centralism. The things those factionalists then said! Their platform stated: "Organisation of the management of the national economy belongs to the All-Russia congress of producers." They reviled the young Soviet state, declaring that bureaucratism (in modern parlance Etatism) will "corrode the Soviet bodies". In calling for “producers’ congresses", " industrial democracy" and “workers’ associations" the opposition talked themselves into accusing Lenin, who was opposed to Lassallean experiments, of "distrusting the working class". Really, looking today through the materials concerning the Workers’ Opposition, one seems to be reading the articles of today’s advocates of "labour self-government" and " producers’ associations". I wonder, are these writers inspired in their fight against the Leninist principles of socialist management by the concepts of the ideologues of the Workers’ Opposition?

p Of course, these ideologues are free to be guided in their activities by any theories they like. It is their affair. But when these theories are handed up as the last word in socialism, as a model to be imitated, when these theories are used as a means to discredit the Soviet social and political system, then it is for us Soviet Communists to have our say about these theories from our Party standpoint. Yes, at one time our Party did have similar ideologues who 259 wanted the economy managed by means of so-called workers’ associations and producers’ congresses. Lenin strongly denounced this as being anarcho-syndicalism. We remain true to this severe assessment of Lenin’s.

p One discerns in the arguments of these ideologues a definite nationalist shading as well. The advocacy of national insularity and apartness, the contention that relationships between the socialist countries and their relations with capitalist states should be founded on absolutely similar ground is an anti-socialist attitude. All this explains why the bourgeois ideologues, who stake on "national communism", go all out to propagandise in the socialist community of nations and in the world communist movement the idea of a special road towards socialism.

p True Communists, however, have their own road towards socialism, a road mapped out by Lenin’s genius. He pointed out that every country liberated from capitalism has specific features of its own in the building of socialism which are determined by national and national-state distinctions. These made for distinctive traits in every country’s development along the road to socialism as reflected in the pace, forms and methods of socialist construction. Undoubtedly, this enriches the theory and practice of the world communist movement and teaches Communists to make a profound assessment of the concrete conditions and possibilities existing in the given country. Our Party has a profound respect for all the fraternal Communist Parties, who, embodying as they do the wisdom of the working class, strive consistently to apply the common principles of communism based on both a deep understanding of those principles and on the concrete situation prevailing’ in this or that country.

But the propagandists of the so-called special pluralist road to socialism are least of all concerned with the national and national-state distinctions of their country. They have something else in mind. They declare that they have discovered the latest variety of socialism, which is the opposite of Leninism, that they have pointed out a path allegedly suited to all countries and nations in the present epoch. Such claims cannot go unchallenged by true Marxists-Leninists. These claims are a result of erroneous theoretical constructions, which, undoubtedly, will be dispelled as time goes on by life itself, by the practice of socialist construction.