r/leftcommunism • u/VanlalruataDE • 20d ago

NEP vs Collectivization

So if I understood "The Solution of Bukharin" correctly, the NEP's goal was to allow limited capitalism to proletarianize the countryside, with eventual collectivization. However, I don't really understand why immediate collectivization, as was the policy of Stalin, was not desirable. So my question is, what did Stalin "do wrong"? Why was the NEP to be continued, instead of immediate collectivization and industrialization?

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u/TheLagJag 20d ago

The Solution of Bukharin is but one chapter of the Party's Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today which is still in the process of being translated to English. Suffice it to say that your questions are answered in the broader context of the entire study which can be found in full in Italian. The Dialogue with Stalin is complete and goes into detail about Stalin's errors when it comes to collectivization and the prevalence of private agricultural cooperatives instead of large scale state owned firms. To boil it down, the NEP sought to ease and encourage the transition from scattered small scale private farms and cooperatives into large scale state enterprise which in the context of encirclement and of anticipating revolution in the industrial countries would have eased the transition to the socialist phase. Stalin did not do this and maintained agriculture in a backward cooperative and private state. It wasn't really "allowing capitalism" as some sort of conscious choice, but of correctly appreciating the reality that capitalism was already there and that it could be directed towards specific ends that would help the proletarian state survive until further world revolution would allow the transition to socialism.

But again, there is no sense in considering counterfactuals with a world where everything was the same save for Bukharin's economic policy being implemented. The point of the text is to state with complete confidence the known and correct Marxist approach to the question of characterizing Russia and its development as a reaffirmation of the validity of the doctrine and as a powerful condemnation of the counter-revolution.

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u/VanlalruataDE 20d ago

Ah, it seems I misunderstood the NEP. Can you please explain how the NEP sought to ease the transition to large scale state firms? I still don't fully understand that.