Re: Sweezey and Stalin

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:44 19/02/00 Rod Hay wrote:

>The excerpt from Sweezy can be read at several levels. The most literal
>is that which Jim D and Michael have read it. At this level it is a
>technical question about the law of value. But the law of value had
>consequences in Stalin's Russia. One's position on a theory of value had
>consequences for political direction. And the consequence was often
>death.
>
>Now whether we can take the 1930s politics of Russia and transform it to
>New York in 1953 is another question. The context of Sweezy (a non-CP
>socialist) quoting Stalin on the theory of value has not been explored.
>It obviously does not have the same context as Russia in the 1930s. But
>what is the political context?

Obviously one context is that Khrushchev's secret speech of 1956 had not
been published. Another was McCarthyism against which it took some courage
to consider economic opinions of Stalin on their merits. Another is the
relationship that Louis Proyect correctly points out between US communists,
New Dealers, and the Russia of the 30's.

In the British conext I have a copy of CPGB notes for speakers relevant for
the week that the 1936 Trials were publicised. They deal with them in a
secondary way to a more major topic, and point out one or two relevant
facts like confessions. They are as believable as the opinion of all those
in Britain who thought that the people convicted of the Birmingham and
Guildford Republican bombs, were indeed guilty of the crimes.

While I do not agree with Louis Proyect's championing of third party
socialism as the answer to the Democrat-Republican two party system in the
USA, I do think Brad is also one-sided. The mistake he makes is to think
that even if Sweezey were a KGB hack that implies Sweezey did not think or
analyse his material. Communist hacks did think. They thought in quite a
clear and disciplined manner. That was part of the problem. But it is not
clear to me that Sweezey was even a communist hack.

Paul Kneisel's contribution, opening the issue up to Preobrazhensky's
economics, is particularly interesting. It really emphasises that the whole
question of the role of the law of value under socialism is a fundamental
strategic issue. Why he got summarily shot in 1937 rather than going on
trial is another tragic matter, (perhaps he was unable to play the
appropriate role) but clearly that is a different question as to why he had
important theoretical differences with Bukharin, who also lost his life.

15 years later we find Stalin had ended the mass purges having referred to
serious mistakes, but had failed to sum up why they occurred, and still
presided over a system that deprived millions of their liberty of
conscience. Nevertheless his late works on Linguistics and on "Economic
Problems of Socialism" are thoughtful and are seriously trying to grapple
with actual issues. Sweezey was not self-evidently a hack for paying
attention to them.

Stalin writes like a paternalistic school teacher who is unable to elicit a
good discussion. His style remains dogmatic with a clear preference for
crisp proletarian answers:

"As you know, the question of the basic economic laws of capitalism and of
socialism arose several times in the course of the discussion. Various
views were expressed on this score, even the most fantastic. True, the
majority of the participants in the discussion reacted feebly to the
matter, and no decision on the point was indicated. However, none of the
participants denied that such laws exist.
   Is there a basic economic law of capitalism? Yes, there is. What is this
law, and what are its characteristic features?"

etc.

But the comments are not silly. In this reply to the discussion are all the
problems that have contributed to the former state centralist socialist
economies increasingly embracing the market rather than less so. The
socialised role of labour power and land is also discussed.

Sweezey's summary of Stalin's position on the law of value restricts its
scope more than the text justifies:

"  our enterprises cannot, and must not, function without taking the law of
value into account. Is this a good thing? It is not a bad thing. Under
present conditions it really is not a bad thing, since it trains our
business executives to conduct production on rational lines and disciplines
them. ... It is not a bad thing because it teaches our executives to look
for, find and utilize hidden reserves latent in production, and not to
trample them underfoot. It is not a bad thing because it teaches our
executives systematically to improve methods of production, to lower
production costs, to practise cost accounting, and to make their
enterprises pay. It is a good practical school which accelerates the
development of our executive personnel and their growth into genuine
leaders of socialist production at the present stage of development."

Although he explicitly defends the importance of giving priority to heavy
industry over light industry, he opens up the subjec. But for such
conscious socialist planning, he argues, the law of value would require
them to close down many heavy industrial enterprises and release the
resources for more profitable light industry.

Although he addresses certain economic categories in what seem to be a
rather mechanical way, somehow reifying them I sense, his words correctly
point out a number of features. The law of value existed before capitalism
and exists still under socialism. It is independent of human consciousness
and in that sense is like a law of nature, although its scope can be
restricted. Therefore he handles the subject in a somewhat modernist way,
assuming the triumph of conscious decisions over non-human laws instead of
thinking in terms of systems. Nevetheless his words open up to the door to
the considerable difficulties of directly centralised socialist planning.

Neither he nor I assume Sweezey invoked computers as a way out of this
dilemma, but from the passage that Brad has quoted from Sweezey it is
consideration of Stalin's article that has influenced Sweezey to produce a
less commandist and more flexible model of socialist society. Not the other
way round!

Sweezey:
>In the light of this explanation, which seems to me entirely sound, I
>should like to amend the statement which Mr. Kazahaya criticizes, by
>substituting "communist" for "socialist" and "communism" for
>"socialism." It would then read as follows: "In the economics of a
>communist society the theory of planning should hold the same basic
>position as the theory of value in the economics of a capitalist
>society. Value and planning are as much opposed, adn for the same
>reasons, as capitalism and communism." This conveys my meaning more
>accurately than the original wording and is, I think entirely in
>accord with Stalin's view...

If we now make the substitution back we should find Sweezey's original
which clearly gives a much higher role to planning under socialism than
Stalin was prepared to give.


"In the economics of a
>socialist society the theory of planning should hold the same basic
>position as the theory of value in the economics of a capitalist
>society. Value and planning are as much opposed, and for the same
>reasons, as capitalism and socialism."

Even if all Stalin's observations in Economic Problems of Socialism were
wrong, it is an extraordinarily interesting document about where the model
of socialism had got to just before his death. Like Mao's critique of it in
1958 at the time of the Great Leap Forward, it is a historical document
that serious economists of socialism would not want to overlook.

Consider finally this concrete example of what the Soviet Union was trying
to grapple with in the early 50' where Stalin refers to the "confusion"
that "reigns" in price fixing policy:

"The trouble is not that production in our country is influenced by the law
of value. The trouble is that our business executives and planners, with
few exceptions, are poorly acquainted with the operations of the law of
value, do not study them, and are unable to take account of them in their
computations. This, in fact explains the confusion that still reigns in the
sphere of price-fixing policy. Here is one of many examples.

"Some time ago it was decided to adjust the prices of cotton and grain in
the interest of cotton growing, to establish more accurate prices for grain
sold to the cotton growers, and to raise the prices of cotton delivered to
the state. Our business executives and planners submitted a proposal on
this score which could not but astound the members of the Central
Committee, since it suggested fixing the price of a ton of grain at
practically the same level as a ton of cotton, and, moreover, the price of
a ton of grain was taken as equivalent to that of a ton of baked bread.

In reply to the remarks of members of the Central Committee [not presumably
excluding Stalin himself] that the price of a tone of bread must be higher
than that of a ton of grain, because of the additional expense of milling
and baking, and that cotton was generally much dearer than grain, as was
also borne out by their prices in the world market, the authors of the
proposal could find nothing coherent to say. The Central Committee was
therefore obliged to take the matter into its own hands and to lower the
prices of grain and raise the prices of cotton. What would have happened if
the proposal of these comrades had received legal force? We should have
ruined the cotton growers and would have found ourselves without cotton."

Stalin sounds like a commandist CEO who has just found another area of
idiocy in his organisation. His subordinates are tongue tied. They are
unable to point out the special reasons for subsidising bread.

I would therefore agree with Brad that if Preobrazhenskyand Bukharin had
both been  around to take part in a lively socialist civil society debating
conflicting ideas, Stalin might not have found himself faced with
discussion that was either feeble, confused or incoherent or fantastic and
astounding.

But I cannot accept that Sweezey was a hack for considering some of the
propositions in Stalin's article, which illustrates many of the
contradictions looming in Soviet economics at the time of Stalin's death.
As the title implies.

Chris Burford

London