Economic Aspects of Communism

Extract

Any discussion on the economic aspects of Communism has to refer to Russian experience since Russia was the first (and for some time the only) example of the application of Marxist economic philosophy. And it is perhaps only poetic justice that Russia should have contradicted Marx in almost every aspect of his economic teaching. Russia according to Marxist doctrine should never have become Communist—at least not when it did—for it had not experienced the full development of capitalist society. Russia also found it necessary, contrary to Marxist tenets, to operate a normal pricing mechanism and to pay money wages, not according to need, but according to the type of output that the state wished to foster. In other words, the Soviet planners discovered that the acquisitive motive— and original sin—still existed in a Communist state.

But before the significance of this contradiction can be discussed, its existence must be proved. Marx did not study economic problems as an end in themselves but merely because in his day current political controversy had an economic content. To him economics was nothing more than a means of discovering the laws of social development. He argued that the social productive relationships entered into by man formed the anatomy of a society. They enabled a society not only to make the fullest use of its productive powers but also to increase them, and through this increase the productive powers were brought into conflict with the social relationships. In more concrete terms, Marx claimed that the basic contradiction in capitalism is the increasingly social co-operative nature of production, because the means of production are individually owned, and it shows itself in the development of two classes which are inevitably antagonistic since their interests are incompatible.