[PRWC Party Documents] Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism, January 15, 1992

Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism

IV. Certain Lessons from the Collapse of Modern Revisionism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

Socialist Revolution and Construction

Basahin sa Pilipino Basahon sa Hiligaynon

Armando Liwanag, Chairman, Central Committee, Communist Party of the Philippines

January 15, 1992

Upon the basic completion of the new-democratic revolution through the seizure of political power, the proletariat and the people under the leadership of the Party can begin socialist revolution and construction. The means of production and distribution owned by the imperialists, big compradors and landlords are put under public ownership. The strategic enterprises and the main lines of production and distribution are nationalized. These comprise the initial base for socialist construction. Then the socialist state sector of the productive system can be expanded with further investments from the available domestic capital, export income and foreign borrowing.

But there are bourgeois-democratic economic reforms that still need to be undertaken as transitory measures, such as land reform and concessions to peasants of all strata and petty and middle bourgeois nonmonopoly commodity producers. These reforms and concessions do not mean the building of a "national-democratic economy" in lieu of a socialist economy. The cooperativization of agriculture and nonagricultural enterprises as well as joint state-private ownership can be carried out from one stage to a higher one in conjunction with socialist construction and further industrialization.

In view of the fact that so far in history socialist economies have been established upon a low economic and technological level and worse after a ruinous war, the proletarian revolutionary party is obliged to adopt transitory measures. How long these measures should run depends on the concrete conditions. In the Soviet Union, Lenin had to adopt the New Economic Policy. And Stalin subsequently pioneered in drawing up and implementing the series of five-year plans of socialist construction. He succeeded in building a socialist industrial economy.

But even after a socialist industrial economy had been established, the modern revisionists misrepresented Lenin's New Economic Policy as the way to socialism rather than as a mere transitory measure. Thus, Khrushchov, Brezhnev and Gorbachov made this misrepresentation by using the name of Lenin against Lenin. They justified the retrogression to capitalist-oriented reforms by counterposing Lenin's transitional policy to Stalin's program to build publicly-owned heavy and basic industries and collectivize agriculture in a planned way.

After the New Economic Policy served its purpose, Stalin carried out fullscale socialist construction. It was prompt and absolutely necessary to do so in the face of the growth of capitalism threatening the socialist revolution. Anti-socialist critics decry overinvestment in heavy and basic industries, the suppression of the rebellious rich peasants and the exploitation of the peasantry. But they fail to mention that the hard work, the struggle against the counterrevolutionaries and the sacrifice resulted in the raising of production and standard of living, the mechanization of agriculture and the expansion of urban life in so short a period of time. If Bukharin had had his way and prolonged the NEP, the Soviet Union would have generated an uncontrollable bourgeoisie and a widespread rich peasantry to overpower the proletariat, would have had less economic well-being and less defense capability, would have been an easier prey to Hitler and would have been attacked earlier by Nazi Germany.

After World War II, China under the leadership of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China was able to demonstrate that there could be a well-balanced growth of agriculture as the foundation of the economy, heavy industry as the leading factor and light industry as the bridging factor between the first two. The line of Mao was to provide as quickly as possible the producer and consumer goods for the people, especially the peasant masses. But even Mao was unfairly accused by modern revisionists of industrial overinvestment and premature cooperativization. At any rate, the Chinese example under the leadership of Mao bettered the Soviet example under the leadership of Stalin in well-balanced development in a poor country engaged in socialist construction. The theory and practice of scientific socialism, therefore, is ever developing. All modern revisionists are carried away by the theory of "productive forces" and economism. They prate about the law of value but at the same time they obscure the critical Marxist theory of surplus value and the creative line of using what is otherwise private profit as social profit and of converting what is otherwise an anarchic yet monopolistic production for private profit into a system of planned production for use and for the benefit of the entire society.

Marxists have always agreed with Adam Smith and his followers that the value of a commodity is equivalent to the average socially necessary labor time and that the exchange value (price) is realized in the market. In the socialist system, there is a system of wage differentials paid according to quantity and quality of work done. Within the system of public ownership of the means of production and economic planning, the new value created is allocated for the wages fund for consumption, economic reinvestment not only to cover depreciation but also expansion of production, general welfare (education, health, infrastructure, etc.), administration and national defense.

Aside from the wage system with differentials which corresponds to the system of commodity values, the commodities produced incorporate inputs which are bought from other parts of the domestic or world market at certain prices and which are taken into account in the market price of the commodities. Price comparisons can also be made with similar commodities produced abroad.

The socialist system of production has proven to be effective in creating full employment, attaining high rates of economic growth, responding to the basic needs of the people and providing social services until a new bourgeoisie starts to appropriate an increasing part of the surplus product and develops a taste for highgrade consumer goods which it at first acquires through institutional buying from abroad.

In addition to the high consumption and excessive privileges of the new bourgeoisie, another big drain is the misallocation of resources towards military expenditures because of the imperialist threat. This in fact constituted the biggest drain on the resources of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe under the long reign of Brezhnev. But this is obscured by imperialist propaganda whenever it asserts that socialism is inherently flawed or that the so-called Stalinist model pursued by the modern revisionists has failed. In going for the arms race, the Brezhnev regime deviated from the concepts of people's defense and all-round consolidation adhered to by Stalin when the Soviet Union was militarily weaker and faced bigger threats from the capitalist powers.

The fact is that the socialist economies progressed for a certain number of decades and it would take another number of decades for the modern revisionists to make these economies retrogress into capitalism, under such bourgeois notions as stimulating production and improving the quality of production through private enterprise and the free market.

The adoption of capitalist-oriented reforms to "supplement" and "assist" socialist economic development is thereby wrongly rationalized. But the bourgeoisie, the corrupt bureaucrats and rich peasants are recreated and generated to undermine and destroy socialism from within. After a certain period of liberalization of the economy, the bourgeois forces can demand further privatisation and marketization more vigorously and ultimately claim political power as in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union.

But usually at the beginning of their effort to subvert the socialist economy, when there are yet no significant number of private entrepreneurs within the country, they wage a campaign for learning "efficient management" from capitalist countries (unmindful of the wasteful business cycles and wars and the centuries of exploiting the proletariat, the colonies and the spheres of influence), for expanded trade with the capitalist countries, foreign investments, loans and technology transfer and therefore for an investment law attractive to the multinational firms and banks as well as to the domestic bourgeoisie which must be promoted if even the foreign bourgeoisie is allowed to enjoy the freedom of investing and owning assets in the country and hiring local people.

Without having to breach or abandon basic socialist principles and without having to enlarge domestic and foreign private ownership of the means of production, it is possible to use wage differentials and bonuses as incentives for raising the quantity and quality of goods according to reliable and accurate information on productive capacity and consumer demand and according to the resultant economic plan, to satisfy the basic needs of the people first and then to proceed to produce nonbasic goods for improving the standard of living, to build one generation of better housing after another as a lifetime incentive and to decentralize economic activities with better results.

The production of both basic and nonbasic consumer goods are complementary and interactive. When basic needs are satisfied and private savings mount, the people start looking for things to spend on in order to improve or make their lives more interesting. Some highgrade consumer goods can be locally produced. Others can be imported without prejudicing the priority given to the development of the entire economy and the importation of essential producer and consumer goods.

In the case of the Soviet Union, before there could be a Gorbachov, there was the prolonged period of Brezhnev in which the new bourgeoisie developed domestically and resources were wasted in the arms race and in the costly commitments abroad under the theory of defending the Soviet Union by developing the strategic offense capability and by being able to wage wars abroad.

We have seen that the concept of people's defense or people's war against an aggressor, within the people's self-reliant capabilities, within their own national borders and without undermining the growth of the socialist economy, still constitutes the correct policy.

The Soviet corps of research scientists, engineers and technologists was the largest in the world. They made great advances in basic research, experiments and prototyping. But only those advances suitable to the high technology requirements of the arms race were used in a big way. And because of disorientation and some false sense of economy in civil production, old and outmoded equipment tended to be kept and reproduced so that this exceedingly important area of the economy was deprived of the benefits of high technology.

In a socialist economy, the planners must adopt a reasonable measure for depreciation of productive equipment, durable consumer goods and infrastructures so that there is room for innovation and enlivening of production. It is not true that there has to be competition among capitalists in order to generate new and better products. The Soviet Union was able to keep on raising its military and space technology in a planned way.

In carrying out socialist construction, after the transitory period of reviving the economy from the ravages of war and completing the bourgeois-democratic reforms, we shall uphold the principle of instituting the socialist relations of production to liberate the productive forces and promote their growth; and after having advanced along the socialist line and gone beyond certain transitory measures, we shall never retrogress to the revisionist line of using capitalist-oriented reforms to push socialism forward.