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New Light on Trotskii's Economic Views

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Alec Nove
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Abstract

This paper should begin with a series of disclaimers. It cannot pretend to be an analysis of all of Trotskii's ideas on economics and the economy, because this would call for a long book and because this author has not gone through the Trotskii archives or read all relevant published works. There is plenty of room for much more research on these matters, and I hope that Baruch Knei-Paz's admirable book on Trotskii's political ideas' will be followed by one that “reconstitutes” the great many fragments in which Trotskii's economic ideas are presented. Trotskii was not a professional economist, any more than Lenin was, but he did have much to say on economic affairs. What I shall do here is describe and analyze some of Trotskii's more important opinions and pronouncements.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , Spring 1981 , pp. 84 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1981

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References

1. Knei-Paz, Baruch, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1978.Google Scholar

2. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1930, no. 12-13, p. 32.

3. This would certainly be in line with the interpretation of Trotskii's thought by Knei-Paz, as against, for instance, that of Isaac Deutscher. It is odd that Knei-Paz made no reference to this work in his book.

4. Richard, Day, Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation (Cambridge, 1973), p. 13.Google Scholar

5. L. D. Trotskii, “Chto takoe SSSR i kuda on idet” (Original typescript, T3946-53, Trotsky Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University), p. 57. An English translation also exists ( Leon, Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, trans. Max Eastman [New York, 1937]).Google Scholar

6. XI s “ezd RKP(b), mart-aprel’ 1922 goda. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1961), p.

7. Leon, Trotsky, The Defence of Terrorism: Terrorism and Communism, 2nd ed. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1935), pp. 94-95.Google Scholar

8. See the statement by Trotskii in XI s “ezd, pp. 128, 129.

9. Nikolai, Bukharin, Ekonomika perekhodnogo perioda (Moscow, 1920), p. 147 Google Scholar.

10. I am using the translation by László Szamuely in his book, First models of the socialist economic systems (Budapest, 1974), p. 43.

11. Ibid., pp. 43-44.

12. Ibid., p. 44.

13. This last sentence is from the resolution drafted by Trotskii, quoted in Day, Leon Trotsky, p. 29.

14. Vatsetis, I. I., “Grazhdanskaia voina, 1918 god.,” Pamiat'. Istoricheskii sbornik, ed. Natalia Gorbanevskaia, vol. 2 (Paris: YMCA-Press, 1979, pp. 7–81.Google Scholar

15. Bukharin, Ekonomika.

16. XII s “ezd RKP(b), 17-25 aprelia 1923 g. Slenografkheskii otchet (Moscow, 1968), p. 351.

17. Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, trans, from the 4th Russian ed., 45 vols. (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1960-70), 28: 424.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., 30: 332.

19. Stephen, Cohen, “Bolshevism and Stalinism,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., Stalinism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977, p. 22.Google Scholar

20. Leon, Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, trans, and ed. John G. Wright, 2 vols. (New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1945-53), 2: 220-63.Google Scholar

21. See comments by Trotskii in XI s “ezd, p. 136.

22. Ibid.

23. See comments by Trotskii, XIIs “ezd, p. 322. As we shall see, Trotskii was still taking a similar line in 1925. Bukharin claimed, in the course of a polemic against Trotskiism, that the Central Committee insisted that a reference to the importance of the peasant economy be inserted into the draft of Trotskii's report on industry and that Trotskii demurred, saying that,” while in itself correct,” it should not figure in the text of a resolution on industry. In the light of what Trotskii wrote subsequently on the importance of the peasant market, this might seem to be a polemical distortion by Bukharin.

24. Ibid., pp. 338-9.

25. Preobrazhenskii, Evgenii Alekseevich, From New Economic Policy to Socialism, trans. Brian Pearce (London: New Park Publications, 1973 Google Scholar.

26. Leon, Trotsky, The challenge of the left opposition (1923-25), ed. Naomi Allen (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975, p. 59.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p. 60; my emphasis. (This and the preceding quotation are cited by the published source in the form in which they were “leaked” to Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, the émigré Menshevik publication.)

28. Ibid., p. 104.

29. Ibid., pp. 118, 119.

30. Ibid., p. 120.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., p. 137.

33. Ibid., pp. 138, 139; my emphasis.

34. Nikolai, Bukharin, Put’ k sotsializmu v Rossii, ed. Sidney Heitman (New York: Omicron Books, 1967, p. 335.Google Scholar

35. Cited in Day, Leon Trotsky, p. 114. (Grateful thanks to Richard Day for drawing my attention to this reference.)

36. See Alec, Nove, Political Economy and Soviet Socialism (London and Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1979), p. 96.Google Scholar

37. Ernest, Mandel, Trotsky (London: NLB, 1979, p. 82.Google Scholar

38. They also deeply suspected him (see Nikolai Vladislavovich Vol'skii [N. Valentinov], NEP i krizis partiiposle smerti Lenina (Stanford, 1971).Google Scholar

39. Day, Leon Trotsky, p. 4.

40. Alvin W., Gouldner, “Stalinism: A Study of Internal Colonialism,” Telos, Winter 1977-78, no. 34, p. 24.Google Scholar

41. Preobrazhenskii, Evgenii Alekseevich, “Khoziaistvennoe ravnovesie v sisteme SSSR,” Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi akademii, 22 (1927): 19–7Google Scholar

42. Trotskii, “Chto takoe SSSR,” pp. 78, 49, 91, 92; my emphasis.

43. Alec, Nove, “A note on Trotsky and the ‘Left Opposition, ’ 1929-31,” Soviet Studies, 29, no. 4 (October 1977).Google Scholar

44. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1930, no. 9.

45. See Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1932, ed. Naomi Allen and George Breitman (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), pp. 270-75 for Trotskii's critique of the coercive aspects of Stalin's collectivization.

46. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1929, no. 7, p. 3 and 1930, no. 9 (the article in the latter is called “On economic adventurism and its dangers” ).

47. See, for example, ibid., 1930, no. 10, p. 16.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., p. 17.

50. Trotsky, First Five Years.

51. Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 1932, no. 31, p. 8.

52. Ibid., 1933, no. 33, p. 2.

53. See ibid., 1933, no. 34, pp. 5-6.

54. Trotskii, “Chto takoe SSSR,” p. 226. This booklet reprints many paragraphs from the earlier articles cited here.

55. But then they well deserve the reproach addressed to them by Regis Debray: For them, “anything that actually happens is guilty of compromising with reality.” And “What a posthumous fate for so admirable a man as Trotsky!” ( Regis, Debray, Prison writings [Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1973], pp. 38, 140).Google Scholar

56. See Richard, Day, “Theory of the Long Cycle: Kondratiev, Trotsky, Mandel,” New Left Review, September 1976, no. 99, pp. 67–82.Google Scholar