. . . .The most urgent thing at the present time is to take measures that will immediately
increase the productive forces of peasant farming. Only in this way will it be possible to
improve the conditions of the workers and strengthen the alliance between the workers and
peasants, to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. . . . .
This cannot be done without a serious modification of our food policy. Such a
modification [effected by NEP] was the substitution of the surplus-appropriation system [a
euphemism for forcible acquisition of grain production above what is needed for subsistence] by
the tax in kind [i.e., handing over of grain in amounts to satisfy tax due], which implies free
trade . . .
The tax in kind is one of the forms of transition from that peculiar "War Communism,"
which we were forced to resort to by extreme want, ruin and war, to the proper socialist
exchange of products. The latter, in its turn, is one of the forms of transition from Socialism,
with the peculiar features created by the predominance of the small peasantry among the
population, to Communism.
The essence of the peculiar "War Communism" was that we actually took from the
peasant, all the surplus grain--and sometimes even not only surplus grain, but part of the grain
the peasant required for food--to meet the requirements of the army and sustain the workers . .
It was a temporary measure. The correct policy of the proletariat which is exercising its
dictatorship in a small-peasant country is to obtain grain in exchange for the manufactured
goods the peasant requires. . . . only such a policy can strengthen the foundations of Socialism
and lead to its complete victory . . .
The effect will be the revival of the petty bourgeoisie and of capitalism on the basis of a
certain amount of free trade (if only local). This is beyond doubt. It would be ridiculous to shut
our eyes to it.
The question arises: Is it necessary? Can it be justified? Is it dangerous? . . .
.. . . What is to be done? Either to try to prohibit entirely . . all development of private,
non-state exchange, i.e., trade, i.e., capitalism, which is inevitable amidst millions of small
producers. But such a policy would be foolish because such a policy is economically impossible.
It would be suicidal because the party that tried to apply such a policy would meet with
inevitable disaster. We need not conceal from ourselves the fact that some Communists sinned....
in this respect . . . We shall try to rectify these mistakes . . . otherwise things will come to a very
sorry state.
A wise Communist will not be afraid of learning from a capitalist (no matter whether that
capitalist is a big capitalist . . . or a little capitalist cooperator). Did we not in the Red Army
[which was partly created from officers and men of the old tsarist army]learn to catch
treacherous military experts, to single out the honest and conscientious, and on the whole, to
utilize . . . tens of thousands of military experts? . . . We shall learn to do the same . . . with the
commission agents, with the buyers who are working for the state, with the little-cooperator
capitalists, with the entrepreneur concessionaires, etc. . . .
(Ref.: Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary History of Communism, Vol. 1, pp. 213-16)
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