Charles Bettelheim

The Transition to
Socialist Economy

[ Part 2 -- Chs. 3-6 ]

Translated from the French by
Brian Pearce

 
page 121

 

3:  Forms and methods of
   socialist planning and the
   level of development of the
   productive forces

The following paper originated as reflexions on the theoretical aspects of some of the problems now being faced by the economy of Cuba. As these problems are of the kind that necessarily arise in any country that takes the path of building socialism, it has seemed to me that it might be of interest to publish the paper in its original form, with only a few minor changes. It is true that in my paper a number of important questions relating to the building of socialism are not dealt with, because they were not immediately relevant to the Cuban economy. Some of these questions will be tackled elsewhere in this work.

    As will be seen, I am leaving aside here the specific historical conditions of Cuba and the USSR, as well as problems other than economic ones, though these must, of course, be taken into consideration when a concrete solution is decided on.

    This paper is, then, a paper on economic theory. The latter is an indispensable instrument for the working out of a correct solution of economic problems, even though it is not, of course, sufficient in itself to furnish complete answers to all the questions posed by practical planning and the organisation of a socialist economy.

    In order to solve as correctly as possible the problems now facing the Cuban economy, it is necessary to analyse them theoretically. Only on the basis of such analysis can one discover the economic strategy and tactics appropriate to the needs of the present stage, taking into account the specific concrete features of this stage and of the present level of development of the productive forces. Only an analysis like this enables one to define the forms of organisation and methods of work that correspond to the economic strategy and tactics adopted.

    While theoretical analysis is objectively necessary, it is also necessary subjectively, for it alone can provide the correct scientific view which is essential in order to guide the actions of the leaders of the Revolution, the political cadres and the working masses themselves. A scientific view is

 
page 122

essential, too, for the practical implementation of the general line adopted.

    Among other things, this should enable them:

    (a) To overcome the hesitations that may legitimately be felt before replacing familiar methods of work and forms of organisation by new methods and forms;

    (b) To avoid the feeling that they are retreating, on the plane of economic organisation, when they are only renouncing organisational forms that are either outgrown or premature, that is, in either case, inappropriate;

    (c) To escape the temptation to imitate methods or forms of organisation which may have produced positive results in different objective conditions, where priorities other than those which prevail today in the Cuban economy had to be observed.

    On the theoretical plane, as we know, the fundamental problem consists in treating the productive forces in conformity with their nature. If one acts otherwise, it is impossible to master the productive forces, and so to direct their development effectively.

    Similarly, on the theoretical plane, it is essential to analyse men's behaviour not as if this were ultimately determined by the idea they have of their relations between themselves and of their respective roles (which would imply that it is enough to change this idea, through education, to achieve a change in their behaviour in the desired direction -- an idealistic view of the way things happen), but as a consequence of the actual places men occupy in the technical and social division of labour and in a given process of production and reproduction (which also reproduces their needs, while gradually changing them), a process which is itself basically determined by the level of development of the productive forces.

    An analysis of this kind enables us to understand that the decisive lever for changing men's behaviour consists in changes effected in production and the way it is organised. Education's role is essentially one of eliminating attitudes and forms of conduct inherited as survivals from the past, and apprenticing people to the new forms of behaviour imposed by the actual development of the productive forces.

    It is on the basis of these rules of general analysis, the rules of historical materialism, that we have to solve the theoretical problems set by the evolution of the production-relations, as a result of the progress of the productive forces, together with the problems of delimiting the different forms of property, of the organisation of the socialist sector, of the organisation of exchange, of the distribution of income, and of planning.

I  Delimiting the socialist sector from the private sector
  under the dictatorship of the proletariat

    We know that Marx and Engels showed that the development of capitalist economy is accompanied by the appearance of forms of production that are increasingly social, and that it is this increasingly social character of the productive forces that makes socialisation of the means of production an objective necessity.[1] We know, too, that the founders of scientific socialism

 
page 123

showed that the social character of the productive forces is more or less strongly marked, depending on the type of economic activity and the nature of the techniques employed.

    From these analyses, and his further developments of them, Lenin drew practical conclusions about the delimitation between the socialist and private sectors of the economy during the first phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and about the conditions needed for the withering away of the private sector and the integration into the socialist sector of activities at first carried on by the private sector.

    Lenin emphasised especially that it is not possible to solve the problems of small and middle-peasant economy without reorganising the economy as a whole, without "a transition from individual, disunited petty commodity production to large-scale social production". And he adds:

"This transition must of necessity be extremely protracted. It may only be delayed and complicated by hasty and incautious administrative and legislative measures. It can be accelerated only by affording such assistance to the peasant as will enable him to effect an immense improvement in his whole farming technique, to reform it radically."[2]

    In 1921, in his well-known report on the substitution of a tax in kind for the requisition system, Lenin returned at some length to these same notions:

"Any Communist who thought the economic basis, the economic roots, of small farming could be reshaped in three years was, of course, a dreamer . . ."
"It will take generations to remould the small farmer, and recast his mentality and habits. The only way to solve this problem of the small farmer -- to improve, so to speak, his mentality -- is through the material basis, technical equipment, the extensive use of tractors and other farm machinery, and electrification on a mass scale . . ."[3]

"We must try to satisfy the demands of the peasants."[4]

"How is the peasant to be satisfied and what does satisfying him mean? . . . If we go into this, we shall see at once that it will take essentially two things to satisfy the small farmer. The first is a certain freedom of exchange, freedom for the small private proprietor, and the second is the need to obtain commodities and products. What indeed would free exchange amount to if there was nothing to exchange, and freedom of trade, if there was nothing to trade with!"[5]

 
page 124

basis for social agricultural production had not been established, on a scale sufficient to cope with the needs of society as a whole), and on what this implied as regards freedom of local exchange, this was because agricultural production is the hardest branch of the economy to transform technically, both in respect of material conditions and of production-practices; and also because the peasantry is a particularly important class, whose alliance with the working class is essential to the dictatorship of the proletariat. What is true, however, of individual agricultural production is true also of the crafts and of small-scale industrial production, so long as these have not yet developed a high-level technical foundation.

II  The organisation of the socialist sector

    While the question of how the productive forces should be allocated between the private sector and the socialist sector has long since been the subject of theoretical consideration, this is not true, at least to the same degree, and however surprising it may seem, of the problems posed by the internal organisation of the socialist sector. For this reason, the working out of principles to govern the organisation of this sector in countries taking the socialist road calls for very special attention. The historical experience of the other socialist countries in this sphere needs to be analysed theoretically in order to be fully utilised.

    Historically, down to recent years, the internal organisation of the socialist sector in the Soviet Union has been conceived essentially from the standpoint of confronting the most urgent problems, under pressure from particularly difficult and complex conditions, in situations that were often extremely tense (war communism, reconstruction after the civil war, working out and revising the Five-Year Plans while Fascism was advancing in Germany and a new world war threatened, the war itself, then the reconstruction following that). It was therefore not always possible to adapt this organisation systematically to the requirements of the level of development of the productive forces: it had to be adapted empirically to rapidly changing circumstances.

    This resulted in relatively frequent changes in organisation, as regards both the production-units, with their juridical powers, and the nature of the authorities to which these production-units were attached, their decision making powers and so on. The solutions given to these problems obviously have a big effect on the good or bad functioning of the socialist sector, its speed of development, its profitability, its capacity for adaptation to technical progress, and so on.

    Since, over a long period, the changes made in the organisation of the socialist sector of the Soviet economy were due above all to immediate practical considerations, they were not at all the outcome of profound theoretical analysis. Only fairly recently have the Soviet authorities begun to proceed differently and tried to take account, in the actual organisation of the socialist sector, of the requirements of the law of necessary conformity between production-relations and the character of the productive forces.[7]

 
page 125

    In view of the great importance (for the building of socialism in Cuba or any other country taking the socialist road) of finding a correct solution to the problems of organisation, and in view also of the reference it is essential to make, in this field as in others, to the experience of the most advanced socialist countries, we must give some attention to at least a few of the reasons why these problems have still received, even in the Soviet Union, only a partial and not altogether satisfactory treatment.

    Some of these reasons are purely practical. The most decisive of them seems to be the mainly administrative form that Soviet planning necessarily assumed over a long period, owing to the very high priority that had to be given to the development of the economic infrastructure, especially to heavy industry.

    The Soviet Union was, in fact, an economically backward country where the material foundations of socialist expanded production had to be laid down quickly, by devoting exceptional efforts to the development of Department I of the economy and, more particularly, to the development of the basic industries. In these circumstances, the need for maximum economic efficiency, which ought to be fundamental to organisational work, had rather often to be neglected, if not on the strategic plane, where it was usually respected, then at least on the tactical plane, where it was often relegated to secondary importance, and not only as regards economic organisation.

    Other reasons besides this historical one relate to the stage reached in the theoretical elaboration of decisive points of doctrine, and these deserve close attention.

I  Economic laws and socialism

    One of the most important of these reasons appears to have been an appreciation by certain Marxists which was inadequate, and sometimes even wrong, of the problem of economic laws and contradictions in socialist economy and society.

    An extreme instance of a wrong appreciation of this kind is provided by Rosa Luxemburg who, in a "leftist" view of the future, thought that there would no longer be any economic laws in socialist society and political economy would therefore be deprived of its function.[8]

    The same appreciation was made by Nikolai Bukharin in his book on the political economy of the transition period, especially where he writes:

"As soon as we have to deal with an organised national economy, all the basic 'problems' of political economy, such as value, price, profit, etc., simply disappear. . . . This is why there can be a place here for a certain descriptive system and also for a pattern of norms, but none for a science investigating the 'blind laws' of the market, since the market will have ceased to exist. Thus, the end of capitalist-commodity society will also be the end of political economy."[9]

 
page 126

    For our purpose we shall note two essential aspects of the mistakes made by Bukharin, namely:

    (a) Confusion between "economic law" and "law of the market" (which amounts to reducing political economy to a "science of exchange" and not recognising its nature as the "science of social production");

    (b) Confusion between the free working of laws and their objective nature.

    Mistakes like these obviously make it impossible, too, to understand the conditions under which the law of value operates in the different phases of development of socialist society. It was with regard to the operation of the law of value in socialist society that the wrong theoretical views I have recalled were combated soonest, most vigorously and most systematically. With regard to the practical matter of the internal organisation of the socialist sector, however, the consequences of mistakes like this, or of the same nature, only gradually came to be combated.

    It was in his Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR that Stalin emphasised most strongly that objective economic laws exist in a socialist economy,[11] and that he showed, though without deducing all the consequences, that these laws also have a bearing on the way socialist society is organised, that is, on the forms that have to be given to the production relations and the technical and social organisation of production. These forms need to be modified gradually, so as to adapt them to the actual development of the productive forces, failing which, instead of helping the progress of these forces, they become a fetter upon it.

    In this way, the idea of a possible "contradiction" between productive forces and organisational forms in the socialist sector is put forward, while at the same time the non-antagonistic nature of this contradiction is stressed, since there is no group in society possessing sufficient means to resist the necessary changes -- which does not mean that certain social strata (such as a bureaucratic stratum, say) may not be interested in opposing changes even though these are necessary.

    Mao Tse-tung, too, has emphasised the contradictions that may develop in socialist society, and the need to resolve these contradictions correctly. "Many people," he said, "refuse to admit that contradictions still exist in a socialist society. . . . They do not understand that socialist society grows more united and consolidated precisely through the ceaseless process of correctly dealing with and resolving contradictions . . . The basic contradictions in a socialist society are still those between the relations of production and the productive forces, and between the superstructure and the economic base. . . ."[12]

    The fact that only ten years ago it was necessary to refute the thesis that there are no objective economic laws under socialism, and that it was necessary to recall with emphasis the existence in socialist society of contradictions between production-relations and productive forces, shows how backward theoretical thought had become in this sphere, and explains why the problem of the organisation of the socialist sector was posed in scientific terms only belatedly and partially.

 
page 127

 
2  Property and production-relations

    Another theoretical root of the situation described above, and one which is both deeper and even less studied, is the inadequacy, and sometimes the falsity, of the analyses that have been made of the concepts "production relations" and "property". We know that, for Marx, production-relations are the relations that men establish among themselves in the process of social production, and that these relations change with the development of the material productive forces.[13]

    The nature of the production-relations is thus determined by the productive forces themselves and by their degree of development. Property in (or ownership of) the means of production is the juridical and abstract expression of some of the production-relations, an expression which has to be changed when the productive forces change, and along with them the corresponding production-relations.[14]

    The connexion between productive forces, production-relations and forms of property is far from having always been grasped correctly. We see this, for instance, in Professor Oskar Lange's Traité d'Economie Politique. Like many other economists, Lange regards ownership of the means of production as the "basis" of production-relations.[15]

    Actually, it is the level of development of the productive forces that determines the nature of the production-relations, relations which may find more or less adequate juridical expression in a given form of property in (ownership of) the means of production. Marx emphasised on several occasions this aspect of the link between production-relations and forms of property.[16]

    If we regard as the "basis" of the production-relations what is only a more or less adequate juridical expression and form of them, we are easily drawn into making false conclusions. Such a conception, indeed, prevents us from grasping the real content of socialist property and its different forms. Similarly, it stands in the way of a clear and concrete analysis of socialist appropriation and of the roots of the retention of commodity exchange and the law of value during the first historical period of socialist society. It is essential to spend a little time on these points.

    The mistake that consists in confusing the juridical form of property with effective appropriation is a mistake that has often been made, and which Lenin had to protest against already in his own time. In his well known article "Against 'Left-Wing' childishness and the petty-bourgeois mentality", he contrasts the juridical act of nationalisation with the socialisation that implies the effective capacity of society to account and allot,[17] a capacity which is itself bound up with a certain development of the productive forces (which embrace men themselves, with their level of knowledge).

    Here, Lenin is contrasting the juridical form with the concrete production-relations. He is emphasising that this juridical form is empty when these

 
page 128

relations are such that they do not enable the form to be adequately filled, because capacity to deal effectively with the means of production and their products does not coincide with formal ownership.

    This brings us back, after a seeming detour, to the problem of the internal organisation of the socialist sector. This organisation is, in reality, only effective if the juridical power to dispose of certain means of production or certain products coincides with the capacity to employ these means of production and these products in an efficient way. The social level at which this capacity is to be found at any given moment obviously does not depend on men's "goodwill" but on the development of the productive forces.

    When juridical power and effective capacity do not coincide, when the juridical subject is not really an economic subject, there is a divorce between, on the one hand, the real process of production and distribution, and, on the other, the process aimed at by those who wield political power without possessing effective capacity. This divorce results in a more or less serious absence of real direction of the economic process by those who are supposed to be directing it, and it usually engenders an overgrowth of regulations and an excessive expansion of the bureaucratic apparatus. These harmful phenomena are themselves bound up with the vain effort being made to try and bridge the gulf separating the formal juridical framework from the actual production-relations, which fail to fill this framework adequately.

    Analysed in this way, the problem of the internal organisation of the socialist sector and of the different forms of socialist property can be seen in its full significance.

    For example, in the Soviet Union, the collective-farm form of socialist property is better adapted to the level of development of the productive forces at the disposal of the collective farms than the state form would be. This means that, at the present level of development of these forces, socialisation of the production-process is more real within the collective farm framework than it could be if formal ownership of these productive forces were transferred to the state. The latter would then be obliged either to direct more or less centrally a production-process which, in the present state of things, can only be directed and controlled effectively on the spot, or else to delegate its powers of decision-making to a "director" appointed by the state, who would thus take upon himself the functions that are carried out at present by the collective-farm community and its organs. In fact, such a transfer would cause a setback to socialisation (that is, to control by the community over the production-process) rather than advancing it further. When one speaks of the "higher" forms of socialist property, meaning state ownership, this has only (in relation to production-processes which are not yet ripe for this type of ownership) a strictly historical significance, as a provisional view of future development, and has no immediate relevance to the actual level of development of the productive forces. This is the very reason why it is necessary to retain the so-called "lower" forms. Their existence is thus not to be explained, as some would

 
page 129

have it, by the "conservative mentality" of the peasants but by the reality of the actual production-relations.

    The sale to the collective farms of the agricultural machinery at the disposal of the Machine and Tractor Stations in the Soviet Union provides us with an example of transition from state property to collective-farm property, something that from the formal standpoint implies a "setback" to the degree of socialisation of these means of production. This "setback", however, may signify in reality a step forward in effective socialisation, if it entails, in practice, an advance in the economic efficiency with which society uses the means of production thus transferred.[18]

    It is always a matter, when one wants to ensure maximum conformity between juridical authority and capacity to use, of deciding what type of group has the right to control and direct certain production-processes, and this is something that cannot be done correctly without taking account of the nature of the productive forces involved in the particular process.

    The same principle, of course, has to govern the allotment of juridical powers, over particular means of production or particular products, among the various governmental organs of the socialist state or the various economic authorities of this state. (Thus, in the Soviet Union, the Sovnarkhozy are regional authorities of the state power, whereas a Soviet enterprise is a state economic authority.)

    The assignment of juridical powers to certain social authorities may be expressed in the existence of different forms and levels of state socialist property.

    Thus, while the Soviet state owns certain enterprises, the latter may themselves own their means of production and their products, in so far as they at the same time possess certain juridical powers and the corresponding effective capacity to dispose. The "oneness" of property-right which is characteristic of bourgeois law is thus broken up. It is important to realise that things may, and indeed must, be so during a whole phase of development of socialist society -- not only from the standpoint of the organisation of the socialist sector but also from that of understanding what socialist trade is and what role the law of value plays. I shall come back to this point later.

    It follows from what has been said above that if juridical power to dispose of certain means of production is granted to an authority which does not possess, at the given level of development of the productive forces, effective capacity to dispose of them, then this arrangement will mean that there is insufficient social control over these productive forces. This is what has happened in Cuba in those branches of industry where the essential juridical power to dispose has been entrusted to the Consolidados, whereas the production-units alone constitute genuine economic subjects enjoying effective capacity to dispose.

    What can rightly be called a "production-unit" (and what constitutes a genuine economic subject) varies, of course, depending on the level of development of the productive forces. In certain branches of production,

 
page 130

where the integration of activities is sufficiently advanced, it is the branch itself that may constitute a "production-unit". This may be so, for instance, in the case of the electrical industry, on the basis of the interconnexion that exists between power stations, since this makes possible centralised direction of the entire branch.

    It must further be observed that, depending on the type of use that is made of certain means of production, effective capacity to dispose of the latter may be possessed by different authorities, whence also the possibility of superposition of different juridical powers over the same means of production.

    These are the various considerations that have to be kept in mind in defining the place of each of the different forms of socialist property, the rights of the enterprises, their ties with the central economic organs, the ways in which current economic management is carried on, the forms and rules of economic planning, and so on.

III  The organisation of exchange

    The organisation of exchange, and consequently of the distribution of products, may appear to be dominated by the way production is organised technically. Actually, the organisation of exchange is an integral part of the organisation of the social reproduction process, which consists at once of production, consumption, circulation and exchange of products and activities.

    In a socialist economy which includes, at one and the same time, both petty individual production and social production, the organisation of exchange must necessarily assume a different form depending on the type of production. Theoretical study is also needed here of the question of how to organise exchange in the way best adapted to the relations established between the development of the productive forces and the satisfaction of recognised social needs.

1  Individual production and exchange

    That the existence of individual production under the dictatorship of the proletariat necessarily entails the retention of the categories "commodity" and "money" is nowadays universally accepted. That the existence of these categories necessitates also the existence of a market and of a certain degree of freedom of exchange is, however, sometimes denied. This is so at the present time in Cuba, and it was also the case in the Soviet Union at the end of the "War Communism" period, during which circumstances had obliged the Soviet power to abolish freedom of exchange and reduce the functions of money to the minimum. At that time there were quite a few Communists in the Soviet Union who believed that abolition of freedom of exchange was compatible with the retention, which was then unavoidable, of individual production, and that this would not hinder the development of the productive forces, and so the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 
page 131

    We know how Lenin answered those who thought in this way and how he declared that a certain degree of freedom of exchange was necessary, given the existence of individual production -- a measure of freedom that should be controlled and limited so that it would serve the interests of the dictatorship of the proletariat and not affect the latter adversely.

    Lenin said that, given the basis of individual production,

". . . here you cannot avoid local free exchange . . ."[19]

"We can allow free local exchange to an appreciable extent, without destroying, but actually strengthening, the political power of the proletariat."[20]

    Similarly, the recent experience of People's China has shown that the re-establishment of some individual agricultural production has had to be accompanied by the re-establishment of local markets, and that this has contributed substantially to a marked improvement in the supply of food to the towns and a new rise in industrial production.[21]

    Thus, theory and practice alike confirm the need for a certain degree of freedom of exchange as a corollary of the existence of individual production.

    The concrete problems which it is of the highest importance to resolve correctly concern the limits to be set to this exchange and how to subordinate it to the interests of the development of socialist society. These problems can be settled only through studying the international experience of the socialist countries, and through day-to-day practical experience,[22] analysed in accordance with the methods of dialectical materialism.

    The foregoing remarks and references show, in any case, that the problem of re-establishing in Cuba a local market for agricultural produce results, so far as a certain historical period is concerned, from the nature of the present productive forces of Cuban agriculture.

    This is the perspective, too, in which should be conceived the transition of private agriculture towards socialist forms of production, principally by way of co-operative organisation in the countryside.

    While the organisation of exchange of goods resulting from individual production gives rise mainly to problems of a concrete character, this is not the case with the organisation of exchange of goods produced by the socialist sector, or circulating within this sector, for important theoretical questions arise in this field.

 
page 132

 
2  Socialist production and exchange

    Here, indeed, the very nature of the problems has often been obscured by a mistaken view of things which has centred analysis not upon the real production-relations but upon abstract juridical categories like the concept of "uniform state ownership", or the general concept of "social ownership".

    If to such abstract categories there already corresponded concrete production-relations such that an ultimate and single social authority, that is, a single and solitary juridical subject, was effectively capable of disposing effectively of all the means of production, deciding how they should be used and what should become of their products, then the latter would have completely ceased to be commodities, all the commodity categories (money, prices, etc.) would have disappeared, and there would be no disadvantage in using the concept of social ownership in order to express the complete domination of society over its products and the correlative disappearance of the commodity categories.

    In fact, however, such disappearance of the commodity categories presupposes a degree of socialisation of the process of social reproduction much more advanced than exists today. Only on the basis of this more advanced socialisation of the reproduction process will it be possible for the different forms of social ownership that exist today in all the socialist countries to give place to full and complete ownership by society as a whole, which alone will permit the commodity categories to wither away.

    We know that, as regards present-day collective-farm production, Stalin analysed this withering-away of the commodity categories in terms of raising collective-farm property to the level of public property and the gradual replacement of commodity-circulation by "a system of products-exchange, so that the central government, or some other social-economic centre, might control the whole product of social production in the interests of society".[23]

    The idea of the capacity of a social-economic centre to handle all the products in the interests of society is here seen as decisive. However, society's evolution towards communism absolutely rules out for the future that this social and economic centre be formed by the state (or, a fortiori, by an economic subject like Bukharin's "single state trust"). This centre will be society itself, functioning through its central directing economic organ -- which does not, of course, mean that this centre would act without "relay stations", where very many decisions would have to be taken. In a situation like this, with integration of the process of social reproduction, and organic co-ordination of its various phases, the commodity categories will thus have vanished -- which will not mean, however, that objective economic laws will have vanished, but only the laws of commodity economy.

    In any case, at the present time, even in the most advanced socialist countries, the process of social production and expanded reproduction is not yet a process which has been completely integrated and organically

 
page 133

co-ordinated, with the different parts of it strictly governing each other, and therefore capable of being fully dominated by society.

    The development of the productive forces has indeed brought about an increasing interdependence between the various economic activities, the different elementary processes of production. It is precisely this interdependence, this beginning of integration, that has made socialist economic planning (the only real planning) necessary, and has given its true content to social ownership of the means of production (without which no economic planning is possible).

    However, the process of integration of the various elementary processes of production is only at its beginning. Each of these processes is still developing in a relatively independent way. The appropriation of nature by man is therefore taking place in centres (production-units) which are distinct and separate, and between which complex, manifold and more or less regular relations are established. Each of these production-units constitutes, therefore, a centre for the appropriation of nature which has its specific character, its own reality.

    While the interdependence of these centres reflects the social character of production and as already noted, gives real content to the social ownership of the means of production, the separate and distinct character of these centres determines the juridical form of the ownership of the means of production assigned to each of them.

    Under these conditions, reasoning which starts only from the general concept of "state ownership", to designate the various higher forms of socialist property, and which seeks to reduce the latter to a uniform reality, comes up against insuperable difficulties, especially when analysing the circulation of commodities within the state socialist sector, socialist trade, the role played by money, and so on.

    An example of these difficulties is provided by some of Stalin's analyses in his work, already quoted, on Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. Here, as we know, Stalin tries to explain the need for commodity relations within Soviet socialist society on the basis of the existence of two forms of socialist property: property of the whole people (that is, of the state) and property of more limited groups (essentially, collective-farm property).[24]

    By starting from the juridical sphere and analysing the problem on this basis, Stalin is led to deny the essentially commodity character, at the present time, of exchange between state socialist enterprises, and to render incomprehensible theoretically the nature of the buying and selling carried on between state enterprises, the nature, in this economy of money, prices, business accounting, financial autonomy, etc. These categories are thus deprived of all real social content, and appear as abstract forms or technical procedures which are more or less arbitrary, and not as the expression of those objective economic laws the necessity of which is at the same time stressed by Stalin himself.[25]

    Here we see once more what a theoretical cul-de-sac one can get into when, in analysing a social process, one starts not from the concrete pro-

 
page 134

duction-relations but from a juridical concept treated abstractly, and, a fortiori, when one makes this concept the "basis" of the production relations.

    In reality, the method of dialectical materialism requires that the starting point for analysis be the social relations that constitute the other side of the process whereby man appropriates nature (that is, the production-relations and the actual modes of appropriation). If we approach the matter this way, and take into account that at the present level of development of the productive forces, in even the most advanced socialist society, this appropriation-process is not yet a single process, wholly dominated by society, but is still a multiform and fragmented process, divided between a number of centres of activity and a number of elementary appropriation processes which it is only beginning to be possible to co-ordinate on the scale of society (through socialist planning), then we realise thereby the inevitability of exchange between these centres of activity, and the actual social and economic content of the different forms of socialist property, of socialist commodity exchange, the role played by money inside the socialist sector, and so on.

    When an analysis is made on these lines, the different forms of socialist property no longer appear as the reason that can "explain" the existence of commodity relations in the socialist sector (which would amount to explaining economic categories by a certain juridical superstructure). On the contrary, it is the existence of certain production-relations that explains the commodity relations and the juridical form they have to assume.[26]

    From that point onward we also realise that in proportion as the development of the productive forces leads to an effective integration of the production-processes, an organic co-ordination of these processes, which increasingly become a single process, the field of commodity relations shrinks, and the sphere of activity of the commodity categories withers away. When this evolution is complete, the planning and management of the economy can be directed by a single social authority (which does not necessarily mean a single juridical subject).

    So long as this stage has not been reached, socialist planning takes charge of the conscious direction of all the increasingly numerous processes of social reproduction which are beginning to be co-ordinated (because objectively they control each other), while socialist economic management takes charge of the conscious direction of the various processes that are the responsibility of the different economic subjects. The latter are thus linked together both by the plan, in so far as they objectively control each other, and by commodity relations, in so far as they are still relatively independent.

    In recent years the increasingly complex character of the Soviet economy and the other socialist economies has made it clear that the idea of a rapid withering away of the commodity categories and of socialist commodity exchange was premature, and this is why more attention has had to be given to these categories, to the relative autonomy of each socialist enter-

 
page 135

prise, and so on. At the same time, the increasing integration of the production-processes in the technically most highly developed branches has created new possibilities of managing these branches by electronic means. This enables us to understand better the ways by which it will be possible to develop the a priori co-ordination of economic activities, thus bringing about the final disappearance of the commodity categories.[27]

    The consequences or implications of the foregoing analysis are many. I shall mention here only those which seem the most important in relation to the planning and organisation of the socialist economy.

    (a) In connexion with what has been said, it will be realised that, with the present level of development of the productive forces and integration of the elementary processes of production, the labour expended in production cannot yet be, in its entirety, directly social labour.

    In other words, though the plan lays down the amount of labour to be expended in the different branches of production, it can still do this only approximately, and it is only after the event that it is possible to know to what extent the labour expended on the different kinds of production was, actually and wholly, socially necessary labour.

    The existence of commodity categories and money inside the socialist sector means, in fact, that it is still to some extent through the market that the socialisation of labour is effected.

    The socialist market which serves as controller and medium of the socialisation of labour is already very much modified, in the way it works, by the development of socialist production-relations. Thanks to these socialist relations, the producers are no longer linked together only through their products (which, in a pure commodity society, meant the domination of the producers by their products, commodity-fetishism, and so on), they also maintain direct links, as associated producers. As such, they endeavour to co-ordinate their efforts in advance, and they are able to achieve this co-ordination, to some extent, through the economic plan. The latter lays down the fundamental targets of economic and social development and therefore leaves only a subordinate role to be played by the market. This is possible because, over and beyond the elementary processes of appropriating nature (processes which are still separate from each other, and which therefore continue to oppose the producers to each other to some extent), a beginning has already been made in integrating the process of social production. With the elimination of private ownership of the means of production and the introduction of planning, this social process which is becoming integrated is no longer broken up, no longer fragmented as it is under capitalist conditions, which maintain in being relations of production and of property which have been outgrown by the development of the productive forces.

    (b) What has been said means, too, that at the present stage of development of the productive forces, even in the most advanced socialist countries, society is not yet able fully to know the state of social needs (including the needs that arise in the sphere of material production itself) and to determine

 
page 136

politically in a fairly exact way those needs that will be accorded recognition in the future.

    What follows from this is that it is impossible to proceed in a satisfactory, that is, an efficient, way to carry out an allotment of the means of production, or of products in general, in advance, and that there is need for socialist trade and state commercial organisations. Hence, further, the role of money within the socialist sector itself, the role of the law of value and of a price system that cannot reflect only the social cost of the different products but has also to express the ratio between the supply of and demand for these products, and perhaps to ensure a balance between supply and demand, when the plan has not been able to ensure this in advance and to use administrative measures to achieve this equilibrium would compromise the development of the productive forces.

    (c) The foregoing also means that each production-unit (that is, each social link within which an elementary production-process is going on) has to be allowed a certain freedom of manoeuvre. This must enable each production-unit to cope with whatever has not been foreseen, to make the best use, for the good of society, of the resources under its control, since these resources can be properly used only to serve society's real needs, and the latter are not necessarily those that the plan has sought to foresee. This freedom of manoeuvre must, at the present stage of development of the productive forces, relate both to some elements in the programme of activity of each production-unit and to some of the means to be employed in carrying out this programme.

    The practical problem is to lay down limits to this freedom of manoeuvre which will ensure that it serves the real aims of the plan (the building of socialism, the harmonious development of the productive forces and the satisfaction of society's needs). This practical problem can be solved correctly only by experience, interpreted by theory.

    Here it is important to stress that if adequate freedom of manoeuvre is not allowed to each production-unit, and an attempt is made to determine in advance, in a detailed way, the activity that each is to carry on, together with the conditions of this activity, the result, in the present state of things, will be an enormous wastage of labour-power and products.

    Often, in fact, in planned economies where the necessary freedom of manoeuvre has not been granted to the production-units, this wastage is limited to some extent through the exchange effected by the production units among themselves, formally in violation of the plan but actually, more often than not, in order to achieve the real aims of the plan. This is how the objective necessity of economic laws makes itself felt. What is bad in such cases is that, instead of these laws being used consciously, which is the principle of the plan, they are allowed to operate spontaneously.

    (d) It is this combination of the retention, for an historical period, of the commodity categories, even inside the socialist sector, with the freedom of manoeuvre that has to be allowed, within certain limits, to each produc-

 
page 137

tion-unit, that gives meaning to the accounting autonomy of each production unit, the "business accounting " that takes place in each production-unit and the possibilities of self-financing that each unit should possess. These categories, rules and possibilities are bound up with a particular stage of the productive forces. They reflect the conditions and objective requirements for the working of the socialist economy at its present stage of development. Failure to respect them can only hinder the proper functioning of the economy and put difficulties in the way of planning itself.

IV  The organisation of distribution

    It is a commonplace of Marxist analysis to recognise that the relations and modes of distribution are determined by the actual organisation of production.[28] From this it may be concluded that if commodity relations still survive within the socialist sector, at the present level of development of the productive forces, these commodity relations must also still permeate the production-relations. This is ultimately one of the reasons why, at the present time, in all the socialist economies, this distribution also takes place by way of the commodity categories (money and wages).

    This is a phenomenon that Marx did not foresee, as is shown, for instance, by the analysis he makes in connexion with his Critique of the Gotha Programme. In the passage referred to, Marx envisages an allotment of products by means of "labour certificates", and not through the mediation of a true currency. If Marx imagined the problem of distribution being solved like this in the first phase of socialist society, this was doubtless because at the time when he wrote, it seemed easier for society to dominate in an integrated way the entire social process of production and reproduction than was really the case, or than is still the case today.

    Marx's realism was not at fault, however, when he foresaw that, in the initial phase of socialist society, goods would have to be allotted in accordance with work done and not in accordance with needs. Nevertheless, what then appeared to Marx as a requirement essentially bound up with the "survival" of certain norms of bourgeois right can be understood today, in the light of experience, as a consequence of the retention of commodity categories.

    Since, however, the producers in socialist society are not related merely through their products, but also maintain direct human relations, as associated producers striving to co-ordinate their efforts in advance, and able to do this better and better thanks to the socialisation of the productive forces, the commodity categories no longer dominate either society or the individuals composing it, and the content of these categories is profoundly modified.

    Thus, wages in socialist society are no longer the "price of labour power" (since the producers are no longer separated from their means of production but, on the contrary, are their collective owners), but the way in which part of the social product is allotted. At the same time, this allotment continues to be carried out through the category "wages"

 
page 138

because the labour contributed by each individual is not yet directly social labour.

    Nevertheless, society's increasing mastery over its productive forces enables it to distribute an ever larger share of the social product no longer in proportion to work done, but in proportion to needs, and not through money categories but in kind. The gradual disappearance of the norms of bourgeois right from the sphere of distribution has thus already begun, and it will proceed faster and faster with man's increasing domination of the process of social reproduction and the extinction of commodity relations and categories.

    While the retention of commodity relations and categories, and of all the superstructures connected with this retention, explains the need to relate the payment made to each individual to the quantity and quality of his labour (what is called the "system of material incentives"), the transformation of these relations and categories, and their gradual extinction, which is already under way, with the correlative superstructural changes, explain the increasingly important role given to behaviour inspired by economically disinterested motives.

    The respective places occupied by the different kinds of incentive is thus not to be determined arbitrarily, in the name of some moral vision or some ideal of socialist society -- it has to be related to the level of development of the productive forces, among which men themselves are included, along with their knowledge, their education, and, in general, their culture.

January, 1964. 

 
page 143

 

4:  On some concepts of the
   transitional economy

Nowadays there are a number of countries engaged in building socialism, and this constitutes an experiment on a huge scale that is of concern to a thousand million human beings directly, and indirectly to the whole of mankind.

    Life itself has shown how complex are the problems posed by the building of a new world which must not merely put an end to the exploitation of man by man but also ensure man's increasing control over nature and social development. Thus, men are to be gradually freed from the constraints and limitations that have weighed upon them since human society began. In this way what the founders of scientific socialism called the "pre-history of mankind" will come to an end.

    In face of the rich experience accumulated by the countries which have taken the road of building socialism and which are today in different stages of an economy of transition towards this new social mode of production, it is essential not to remain satisfied with repeating general formulae that were worked out before there had been any social experience of the transitional economy. This is necessary, too, when confronted with the distortions that Marxism has suffered under the influence of various tendencies in bourgeois thought (positivism, empiricism, and so on) or under that of dogmatism or idealism. The time has come when it is essential to make use of the method of dialectical materialism, in order to try and grasp the theoretical meaning of a number of practices connected with the building of socialism. It is essential, too, to undertake criticism of certain analyses that have been made of real and topical problems, using a method which, though allegedly inspired by dialectical materialism, is, in fact, remote from it.

    (For practical reasons, the paper most frequently criticised in this discussion is Ernest Mandel's article called "The commodity categories in the transition period" [Economica, Havana, June 1964]. My purpose is not, of course, to dispute particularly with this writer more than with any other, but to try and define some essential theoretical and methodological positions.)

 
page 144

 
I  Abstract and concrete

    In his Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy, Marx contrasts two methods -- one which proceeds from the concrete to the abstract, and the other, proceeding from the abstract to the concrete, which he describes as the only scientifically correct method.

"It seems," he writes, "to be the correct procedure to commence with the real and concrete aspect of conditions as they are. . . . Yet, on closer consideration, it proves to be wrong. . . . The [method which starts from general conceptions and proceeds to concrete ones] is manifestly the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is a combination of many objects with different determinations, i.e., a unity of diverse elements. In our thought it therefore appears as a process of synthesis, as a result and not as a starting point. . . . [By the scientific method] the abstract definitions lead to the reproduction of the concrete object in the course of reasoning. . . . The method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete is but a way of thinking by which the concrete is grasped and is reproduced in our mind as a concrete." (Op. cit., Editions Sociales edn., pp. 164-5: Eng. edn., pp. 292-4.)[1]

    It is clear that Marx does not advocate that science should stop at the level of the most abstract categories, but that he calls upon scientific activity to think its way back to the concrete by way of synthesis of what he calls "the abstract definitions".[2]

II  Marxist analysis and pre-scientific "analysis"

    The fundamental and "specific" difference between Marxist analysis and pre-scientific (ideological) analysis is that the former recognises that the field to which it is applied is a "complex whole structured in dominance" (to use the expression of Louis Althusser, in his article on materialist dialectics in La Pensée, No. 110, August 1963, reproduced in Pour Marx, Edit. Maspero, 1965: Eng. edn., For Marx, Allen Lane, 1969) and that it therefore uses concepts which are linked together dialectically, their inter-relation expressing the relations and contradictions of the very field to which it is applied. This means that it does not proceed dogmatically and "abstractly", because the very concepts which it employs teach that the "principal " contradiction in a given concrete situation, and the principal aspect of any contradiction, may vary from one moment to another.

    This is why one must always find the principal contradiction in each situation, and the principal aspect of each of the various contradictions (this is the problem of the "decisive link" or the "leading link"). It is clear that one cannot "grasp" this link "mechanically", that to do it requires a series of mental efforts, which eventually make possible a conceptual structuring that gives as faithful an expression of reality as can be achieved.[3]

    Thus, depending on whether we take our examples from the sphere of politics or from that of economics, we shall see that in a given situation

 
page 145

the principal contradiction may be between proletariat and bourgeoisie, or between peasantry and large-scale landowning, or between poor peasants and rich peasants, etc., or else, from the economic standpoint, between consumption and investment, industry and agriculture, the iron and steel industry and the chemical industry, etc.

    These contradictions are never, of course, presented, so far as historical materialism is concerned, as absolute contradictions, but as being underlain by the unity of the contradiction. Also of course, these contradictions are based on those between the productive forces and the relations of production, but the latter do not exhaust the content of the contradictions: they are a specific and fundamental (which does not mean principal) degree of this reality, and possess driving power in relation to the other degrees, while the latter, in turn, react upon this fundamental contradiction (which means, for example, that contradictions in the superstructure may hinder or even block the development of the productive forces). The whole thus operates like a complex structured whole, always marked at any given moment by a principal contradiction.

    These contradictions merge, at a certain moment, in a certain way, and this amalgamation gives rise to a new situation which is qualitatively different from the preceding one. In this new situation the principal contradiction is not the same as it was in the previous situation, and, in general, the hierarchy of contradictions and of their aspects has been profoundly modified. Such qualitative changes mean, when they take place in the socio-economic field, either that a new mode of production has been entered upon, or else a new stage of a given mode of production, or a new point has been reached in this stage. To say that the principal contradiction has been modified is also to say that the decisive link by which the situation can again be modified is different as compared with the previous situation.

    Thus, depending on the nature of the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of the contradictions, the line of practical action will be different. By taking examples from the field of politics and economics we shall see that, depending on the situation, the principal link which has to be grasped in order to change this situation is constituted now by the grouping of the revolutionary forces around the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat allied with the peasantry over the other social classes, or allied with the poor peasantry only, now by the priority of industry over agriculture taken as basis of development, with industry as the driving force, the relatively extensive use of market forces (N.E.P.) or rapid collectivisation, centralised planning or the use of economic levers, etc.

III  The Specificity of Marxist dialectics

    However, contradictions must not be studied in themselves (in the Hegelian manner); they need to be considered as forming part of "the very essence of things", as Lenin puts it.

    This is where the specificity of the contradiction lies, in Marxist dialectics. It is this specificity that brings it about that, in dialectical materialism,

 
page 146

every contradiction reflects the existence of a complex process and constitutes one contradiction amid a series of others. This is also why, in the totality of contradictions that makes up a structured whole, there is always one contradiction which is the principal one. As Mao Tse-tung says:

"In the process of development of a complex thing, many contradictions exist; among these, one is necessarily the principal contradiction. . . ." (Mao Tse-tung, On contradiction, p. 55: Eng. version from Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 35.)

    Materialist dialectics is thus something very different from the simplifying abstraction, remote from the historical, the complex and the concrete, which Ernest Mandel offers us as "Marxist dialectics".[4] This kind of abstraction is not even at the level of idealist dialectics in its most finished form (the Hegelian form), but it starts, like idealist dialectics, from the basic presupposition of a simple contradictory unity which develops within itself by virtue of the negative element in it, so that the "concrete" totality that results from this development always brings us back to the original simplicity. It is especially important to stress that the desire to consider only "simple" categories, to refuse theory access to the concrete, leads precisely to the errors that it is sought to avoid.

    Take, for example, the problem posed by the fact that the proletarian revolution has been victorious in a number of countries with relatively underdeveloped productive forces. Confronted with this situation, an attitude which does not correspond to that of dialectical materialism can lead, and does in fact lead, to two sorts of "explanation", neither of which has anything in common with Marxism, and which, furthermore, though mutually exclusive, are both sometimes accepted by those who decline to recognise the specificity of Marxist dialectics:

    (a) The first "explanation" leads to declaring that, though the productive forces of the under-developed countries were in themselves too weak to provide the source of the revolutionary movement, it was nevertheless the contradiction between productive forces and production-relations that was the source of the revolution that occurred in these countries, because what counts is not the "local" or "national" level of the productive forces but the world contradiction between productive forces and production-relations.

    This way of allegedly "solving" the problem brings in, first of all, a purely idealistic relationship between what is internal and what is external, and, in addition, it reveals that those who offer this "explanation" have not understood that the contradiction between the level of development of the productive forces and the production-relations, although it is the

 
page 147

fundamental contradiction, is only one of the contradictions in the complex situation of the country where the revolution has occurred, and is not necessarily, and even, generally speaking, does not constitute the principal contradiction. The latter may be found at quite a different level. It was constituted, for example, by the revolt of the Russian peasant soldiers against continuing the imperialist war. This war itself, of course, resulted from the contradiction, on the world scale, between the level of development of the productive forces and the production-relations; but this contradiction had attained its maximum sharpness only in the most highly developed countries.

    This contradiction existed, too, though to a lesser extent, in the countries where the revolution occurred, and this was what made it possible for the revolution to assume a socialist character. However, the revolution took place in these countries not because the contradiction between productive forces and production-relations had reached maximum sharpness there, but because there was a principal contradiction (not identical in each country) which had become very acute, and because the revolutionaries of these countries were able to lay hold of this contradiction so as to effect a radical transformation. This transformation assumed a socialist character in so far as these revolutionaries did not confine themselves to acting upon the principal contradiction (guiding the masses in their struggles for peace, or for freedom, or for land) but undertook the task of resolving the fundamental contradiction of our age.

    (b) The other "explanation" of the development of the revolution in countries where the productive forces have not yet reached a high level of development leads (and this is the idealist alternative) to a denial of any role to this contradiction between productive forces and production relations, and explaining the revolutionary process by revolutionary consciousness alone, by the example set by the socialist countries, and so on.

    We thus see how refusal to appreciate the complex and concrete character of Marxist analysis leads either to idealistic positions or to mechanistic ones. It is noteworthy that all the conceptions which depart from Marxism in this way finally end up in eclecticism.

    Actually, if, as Mandel thinks, Marxism were incapable of analysing "real capitalism as it has developed historically . . . as it has developed concretely . . ." but only a "pure and abstract capitalism. . . ." (art. cit., pp. 9-10), it would provide us merely with a "pure" and "simple" theory which would therefore be remote from concrete conditions, which are particular, historical, contingent and accidental. These conditions, while they are those of practice, would thus elude the grasp of theory. Hence forth, as the well-known expression has it, "the necessary would make itself felt through the accidental", and the latter would therefore have either to be ignored or else made the object only of short-sighted practice, of empiricism.

    A conception like this can obviously provide no guidance for effective

 
page 148

practice, since, if it is to be effective, theory must be capable of grasping the allegedly "accidental", that is, of conceiving reality as a complex, structured whole, involving a totality of contradictions which are never congealed once for all in an immutable hierarchy. This is what Lenin expresses when he says: "Concrete analysis of the concrete situation is the soul of Marxism." This is so because Marxism is not an "abstract" theory but a theory which leads to the concrete, and which therefore can be a guide for practice. Thanks to this, Marxist practice in the economic and social spheres can operate upon all the contradictions. It is able to do this because it enables us to grasp the links that exist between all the contradictions, and to ascertain what, at any given moment, is the principal contradiction, which is such because by acting upon it one can eventually act upon all the contradictions.

    For Marxist analysis there is not, on the one hand, an abstract model functioning in the realm of ideas, and, on the other, a reality which comes more or less close to this model, and includes, besides the categories of the "model", some "accidental conditions", that is, some purely "external" factors. Marxism does not lead to such a superficial view of things. It considers every reality as a structured whole which has to be analysed as such, with its principal and secondary contradictions.

    Lenin provides a precise theoretical explanation of the October Revolution by taking account of the totality of the conditions that existed at the time of that revolution, that is, the real, historical, concrete conditions. Only thus can one understand why the socialist revolution, dictated fundamentally by the contradiction between productive forces and production relations, broke out, not in the countries where this contradiction had been brought to its maximum acuteness, but in those where a number of historical and concrete "conditions" came together. An explanation which resorts to taking account of these "conditions" can avoid eclecticism and empiricism only if these conditions are theoretically reintegrated in the overall conception of a structured complex whole. More precisely, these conditions have to be understood as they are, that is, as the conditions of existence of a complex whole, taken in its totality.

    If, in the name of the "purity" and "simplicity" of theory, one leaves the conditions out of account, then one is left operating outside reality, which is always complex, historical, concrete and structured, and always includes principal and secondary contradictions, and contradictions whose "order of importance" changes with changing circumstances.

    So long as one remains at this level of ideological abstraction, one can know only a "pure" capitalism, on the one hand, and a "pure" socialism on the other. On the political plane this can lead either to "ultra-leftism" (for instance, with the slogan, mechanically applied in all circumstances, of "class against class") or to opportunism, waiting indefinitely for real capitalism to become sufficiently "pure" for the coming of "pure" socialism to be inevitable.[5]

    When what is on the agenda is building socialism, the "purest" conception

 
page 149

of socialism is of only limited value, because history is never "pure", nor is it "straight and even as the Nevsky Prospekt" (which means, among other things, that the features which will characterise developed socialist society are not only not all necessarily to be observed in the society of transition, but that it may even happen that, during certain stages of the development of this transitional society, some features that one may expect to be possessed by the socialist society of the future will temporarily become blurred, and will not at all necessarily become increasingly clear-cut).

    What matters, therefore, if theory is to be capable of throwing light on the way forward for the transitional society or the conditions for the building of socialism, is analysis of the concrete conditions of this transitional society or of this building of socialism, in a particular country. This analysis must obviously deal with the significant wholeness of the situation. Here again it is a question of analysing the totality of the contradictions, bringing out the principal contradiction and the secondary contradictions, and the principal and secondary aspects of the contradictions. Only thus can the specific character of a situation be brought out, with the specific character of the contradictions that are characteristic of it.

    The specific character of the contradictions (in a given country at a given time) is only the reflexion of the conditions of existence of this country (the level of development of its productive forces, its culture, its traditions, its size, the level of consciousness existing at a particular moment) on the contradictions in general, and the principal contradiction in particular. This is precisely why socialism is not being built under the same conditions in Cuba, in the USSR, in China, and so on. Whoever refuses to take account theoretically of these "specificities" is not a Marxist. That is where one falls into empiricism and eclecticism, because one wants to keep theory outside of history.

    Except from the point of view of ideology, practice and theory are never outside of history. What they have to deal with, in reality and in thought, is never a "pure" mode of production but always an historically given social formation, with all its specific contradictions, its principal and secondary contradictions, and so on. Marxism is the only theory that enables us to deal practically and theoretically with a reality like this (which is what Mandel refuses to do, not only theoretically but also practically).

    With a living approach like this, of course, the contradictions and categories are no longer univocal; they do not have one fixed role and meaning, given once for all. At the same time, they are not "equivocal", for, while they are no longer determined once for all in their role and essence, "they show themselves to be determined by the structured complexity" which assigns them their role (cf. Louis Althusser, art. cit., p. 37).

    The problem of dialectical materialist analysis is precisely that of revealing why and how it is that successively dominant contradictions do not follow each other in an arbitrary way: and the problem of Marxist practice is to grasp what at each moment is the principal contradiction,

 
page 150

and how by acting upon it (that is, by acting on what Lenin called the "decisive link") one can pass from a situation dominated by one contradiction to a situation dominated by another.

    The generality from which the scientific approach starts is not itself the outcome of an abstracting process, but of complex social processes taking place at the level of technique and ideology. It is upon these abstractions that science works in order, gradually, to go forward to fresh abstractions, enriched by increasingly "concrete" knowledge, and thus forging scientific concepts (which will eventually become the negation of the ideological and technical concepts with which investigation began).

    It is this process of enrichment (of progress towards the concrete) that is the essence of scientific thought and of the dialectical materialist approach. One must avoid substituting for this scientific and dialectical approach the simplifying procedures of deduction, that is, of mere formal logic.[6]

IV  Dialectical synthesis and the factor of practice

    Ernest Mandel would appear to be right when he says: "One must avoid confusing complex reality with its simplified reproduction in theoretical thought; that is, one must not close one's eyes to all the complexities of reality, always infinitely richer than theory, which by its very nature tends to simplify things."[7] This statement is true, however, only in relation to the most impoverished forms of theoretical thinking. Also, Mandel is at fault in not practising the precept he states, for he tries to deal with the complex reality of the transitional society by means of the simplest and most abstract economic categories of "pure" and fully developed socialist society.

    What Mandel actually tries to do is to deduce, from the most abstract categories relating to socialist society, the more concrete economic categories that characterise this society, or the transitional societies, together with the practical laws that govern the working of these societies. By so doing, he fails to follow the road that leads from the most general abstractions to the concrete in thought. In order to traverse this road one needs to go outside the simple relationships of formal logic (deduction and reduction), and use the methods of dialectical synthesis.

    It is in fact impossible to re-create the concrete by merely adding abstractions together. It has to be reproduced by means of dialectics, which is, indeed, the way in which one gains access to reality. And in order to reach reality in this way, one has to proceed by mediation, by reconstituting in concepts the organic totality of a socio-economic formation, something that can only be done by taking account of all the factors that make up this totality, including, of course, the factors of practice, beginning with economic practice itself : and this is true, also, when one is trying to construct the theory of socialist economy.[8]

    In order to work out a "theory of socialist economy", Mandel does not hesitate, like Bukharin forty years earlier,[9] to operate with the most meagre

 
page 151

of concepts, the only ones that could be worked out before there had been any social practice in the building of socialism. At the same time, he rejects as "impure", and unworthy of being accorded any theoretical value, the concepts which it has been possible to work out since then, as a result of social practice in the building of socialism.[10]

    As often happens, the positivist approach, that is, the mechanical contrasting of a dead "reality" with an equally dead abstraction, becomes transformed into a kind of idealism which renounces all approach to reality through practice.

    This attitude is very similar to that adopted by those opponents of Marx who, like Böhm-Bawerk and others, have tried to set Book I of Capital (the theory of value and the laws of price-formation in simple commodity economy) against Book III (the theory of price-formation in capitalist society), by saying that Marx denied in Book III what he had asserted in Book I. These opponents of Marx accused him of sliding down from the plane of abstract and theoretical analysis in Book I to the "practical" conceptions of Book III. According to them, all that appears in Book III is a pragmatic description of the actual practice of capitalists. This view ignores what is essential, namely, that Marx's scientific approach makes it possible to express the theoretical foundations of this practice (which is that of capitalism).

    In the same way, the political economy of socialism cannot restrict itself (unless it is to remain sterile) to repeating the most general abstractions, or trying to deduce from these the whole of the political economy of socialism. It has to explain theoretically (that is, by bringing out its theoretical meaning) the practice of the countries which are actually building socialism[11] or taking their first steps along the road of transition to socialism.

    Similarly, too, the theory of the proletarian revolution cannot restrict itself, after nearly a century of practice (from the Paris Commune to the Cuban revolution) to the mere general categories that are to be found in the writings of Marx and Engels previous to the Commune. This theory must be enriched by the experience of the Soviet revolution, that is, the practice of Leninism, and the practice of the other revolutions that have taken place; otherwise it is incapable of becoming a theory which is as rich as it needs to be, because incorporating all the lessons of experience.

    Finally, refusal to take account of social practice in order to construct a living theory leads to dogmatism on the plane of thought and, in a way that seems paradoxical but is in fact strictly logical, to practicalism on the plane of action, that is, to the absence of any revolutionary theory -- without which, as Lenin often emphasised, there can be no revolutionary action.

    In the field of the building of socialism, a conception like this leads, inter alia, to treating as theoretically well-founded those practices which formally seem to express the most abstract categories.

 
page 152

    Moreover, this methodological attitude gives rise to the illusion that it is possible to choose, among "possible" modes of practice (as one imagines these laid out for one's choice, in the field of abstractions), those that seem "morally" the best.

    Unless enriched through social practice and experience (which practice also includes, of course, theoretical practice), abstract concepts seem to open on to a multitude of "possible" lines of action, so that practicalism links up with subjectivism and voluntarism.

V  Theory and the Contradictions of Practice

    For a Marxist, there can be no question of seeking to impoverish theory merely in order to make it more "intelligible". On the contrary, the problem is to enrich theory so as to make it an increasingly efficient guide to practice.

    Marx's method, as we know, consists in starting from social practice and its results. In the economic field, Marx begins with the simplest, historically given relationships. Since every relationship has two aspects, which are both related and contradictory, Marx studies the contradictions within it and the way in which these have been actually resolved in social practice. Then he studies this resolution and the development of the relationships it implies, and thus the contradictions involved in these relationships, and so on. This method is that of dialectical materialism applied to social and historical reality. It therefore requires that analysis be made of the contradictions that have been bequeathed by history and have developed in the course of practice.

    The political economy of socialism, or, more generally, the political economy of the societies which are building socialism, can be worked out only in this way, by seeking the contradictions that are characteristic of this economy or these societies, as of all living reality, and analysing how practice resolves these contradictions. When doing this, of course, one has to be careful not to put on the same plane the principal contradictions and the secondary ones, or forget that the fundamental contradiction of a mode of production must be situated in the sphere of production itself. Marx founded political economy as a science precisely by basing his analysis on the sphere of production: he showed that the phenomena which take place in the sphere of distribution are the corollary of those more fundamental phenomena that develop in the sphere of production.

    The fundamental contradiction of the transition period (that is, of a period in which socialism has not yet been built because the level of development of the productive forces is not yet high enough) is that which contrasts an advanced form of appropriation (made necessary by the development of the productive forces on the world scale) with the low level of these productive forces locally.

    Consequently, the essential problem in building socialism -- in the economic sphere -- is to overcome this contradiction by raising the local productive forces as quickly as possible to the level that corresponds to

 
page 153

that of the forms of appropriation, while safeguarding these forms of appropriation from the dangers of degeneration which threaten them so long as they have not been filled by sufficiently developed productive forces. The struggle against the possible degeneration of the advanced forms of appropriation implies, of course, struggle against bourgeois ideology and the penetration of bourgeois standards of behaviour.[12] It also implies correct handling of the fundamental contradiction, that is, the development of the indispensable intermediate forms[13] between the social forms of appropriation and the not yet complete domination by society of all the aspects of production.[14]

    "Che" Guevara correctly criticises[15] -- but mistakenly ascribes to me -- a "mechanistic" conception of the law of conformity between the level of development of the productive forces and the character of the production relations.

    If, in Cuba as previously in China or in the Soviet Union, the socialist revolution has been victorious, this is not because the contradiction between the level of development of the productive forces and the character of the production-relations had reached maximum acuteness there, but because the specific conditions in which this contradiction developed made possible the victory of the workers over the forces of the possessing classes and of imperialism. Nevertheless, this specific situation and this victory do not alter the fact that in the countries where the proletarian revolution has been victorious up to now, the relatively low level of development of the productive forces makes a more or less prolonged transition period essential -- a period marked precisely by the circumstance that the new property relations and production-relations are "in advance" of the local level of development of the productive forces.

    This is one of the specific problems of the building of socialism in the economically under-developed countries. The existence of this problem necessarily dooms to failure the attempts made by Mandel and others to deduce, from the general remarks made by Marx and Engels regarding the way a developed society works (one in which the level of development of the productive forces is in conformity with the new property-relations), the conditions in which the transitional society operates.[16]

    The principal contradiction of a society, however, must not be confused with the fundamental contradiction of a mode of production, that is, with the contradiction between the production-relations and the level of development of the productive forces. The principal contradiction may be situated, at a particular moment (and this may even be frequently the case), in the superstructure -- usually the political superstructure, but also in the ideological, religious, etc., superstructure. Only an understanding of the complex unity to which this principal contradiction belongs can enable one to drive it to the limit and thus explode the other contradictions as well (including the fundamental ones).

    If the principal contradiction is not driven to the limit then, as a rule, only secondary restructurings will take place. These will bring about a

 
page 154

change in the principal aspect of the principal contradiction (e.g., a change of regime or of political status), but not a change in the mode of production, or, more precisely, in the class nature of the state.

    For example, the contradiction between national aspirations and imperialist repression constitutes the principal contradiction during the struggle of a colonial country for political independence. All the other contradictions concentrate (merge) in this principal contradiction. A Marxist party which does not grasp this fact (theoretically and practically) is incapable not merely of understanding the situation but also, and ipso facto, of directing the way it will develop. It is necessary also to grasp what the principal aspect of this contradiction is (e.g., which is the class that, at a given moment, is in the vanguard of this struggle). On this condition only is it possible to foresee how victory in this struggle (the merging process, the transition from contradiction to identity), accession to independence, will sharply change the status and the very structure of the contradictions, making another contradiction (e.g., peasants versus landowners, or working class versus bourgeoisie) the new principal contradiction that has to be grasped in order to lead the struggle (by keeping or winning leadership). With the capture of power, a new structure of contradictions emerges, and so on.

    What, of course, follows from this is that, after a revolutionary transformation, the elements in the situation (a new situation) on which one has to act in order to go forward are no longer the same as before, and it is no longer the same attitudes, slogans and forms of consciousness that are decisive. It is from this that, in the absence of a high degree of theoretical consciousness, the difficulties of transition from the armed struggle to the stage of economic construction arise. Hence also the great dangers involved in appealing, in the construction phase, to the same qualities or attitudes as in previous phases. Thus, while in the phase of struggle for power what was characteristic of the revolutionary consciousness was the spirit of sacrifice and discipline, capacity for military organisation, and so on, other subjective elements will usually be decisive in the construction phase: sense of economic analysis, ability to grasp new social contradictions, spirit of technical organisation, and so on.

    Accordingly, declarations about the importance in the struggle for socialism of "revolutionary consciousness" in general are void of any precise content (they are neither true nor false). All that can be decisive is a particular concrete manifestation of this "consciousness".

VI  Science and ideology

    In discussions about the role allegedly played by "consciousness", in the most general sense, as a quasi-autonomous force in the struggle for socialism, or in the building of socialism, reference is often made to the theses of the Economic Manuscripts of "the young Marx". This is done because of the "humanistic" character of these theses and the central position assigned in them to "man". Frequently quoted is the following

 
page 155

passage from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in which Feuerbach's equation, "humanism means naturalism" is accepted:

"Communism as the positive abolition of private property, of human self-alienation, and thus the real appropriation of human nature through and for man. It is, therefore, the return of man himself as a social, i.e., really human, being, a complete and conscious return which assimilates all the wealth of previous development. Communism as a fully developed naturalism is humanism and as a fully developed humanism is naturalism. It is the definitive resolution of the antagonism between man and nature, and between man and man. It is the true solution of the conflict between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution of the riddle of history, and knows itself to be this solution."[17]

    The fact that Marx, in 1844, still accepted the equation he had borrowed from Feuerbach shows the line that separates the consistent materialist positions taken up by Marx in his later writings from the humanistic positions he was still defending in the Economic and Political Manuscripts. It was in the latter, moreover, that Marx expressed himself thus regarding materialism:

"We see here how consistent naturalism, or humanism, is distinguished from both idealism and materialism, and at the same time constitutes their unifying truth."[18]

    Actually, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts contain, not yet entirely eliminated, Feuerbach's idea of an essence of humanity, regarded as a fact, or even a "truth" of humanity. It is therefore not accidental that these Manuscripts have given rise to controversies and polemics, and have encouraged some interpreters to find proof in them that Marx's thinking, at least in the Manuscripts, was fundamentally ethical.[20]

    We know how Engels, in a letter to Lafargue dated 11th August 1884, refuted the view of those who wanted to make Marxism a system of ethics:

"Marx would protest against the economic 'political and social ideal'

 
page 156

which you attribute to him. When one is a 'man of science' one does not have an ideal; one works out scientific results, and when one is a party man to boot, one fights to put them into practice. But when one has an ideal, one cannot be a man of science, for one starts out with preconceptions."[21]

    Man as producer, man producing himself, and not man conscious of himself, is Marx's point of departure. Accordingly, man's truth is in his becoming. Despite certain appearances, we no longer have here a purely intellectual approach, and are far beyond Hegel's "self-consciousness".

    In short, referring to the humanism and the role of consciousness that we find in the terms used in the 1844 manuscripts means referring to Marx's thought as it was before Marx himself had taken his stand definitively on the platform of dialectical materialism. In these writings the concept of production-relations does not yet appear, nor that of the class struggle as the driving force of history.

    Another point that must not be forgotten is that in the Manuscripts the concept of "alienation" (used in the context of the quotation previously given) is still one of the fundamental concepts. It was to lose this stat