Gorbachev on Lenin and NEP

Joe R. Golowka joeG at ieee.org
Sat Jun 22 16:51:01 PDT 2002


From: "Alexandre Fenelon" <afenelon at zaz.com.br>
> They could have just raised grain prices.
>
> -Yes, this was already tried in 1923, when there was the first scissor
> -crisis. But it wouldn?t help too much as far as industrialization was
> -of concern. To promote industrialization, a certain degree of
> -expropriation of peasant?s excedents was necessary. This could
> -be acomlished anyway.

Yes, raising grain prices would have slowed instustrialization. But given how many people rapid industrialization killed one can make a good case that such an alternative path would have been better. Industrialization is not a purely positive phenomenon.


> > So there is no point
> > -in saying USSR would be better had NEP policies been kept
> > -after 1928. Instead I would believe the situation would evolve
> > -(1) to capitalist restoration or (2) to a huge economic crisis
> > -(not discarding a combination of 1 and 2).
>
> (1) had already happened by 1928 (and was solidified by the five year plans)
>
> -I didn?t understand your point here

Capitalist restoration had already occured by the time the NEP was implemented (although it was still called 'socialism'). The USSR was state-capitalist from day one of it's creation.


> Other alternatives to Stalin's policies within a bolshevik framework
> include the
> models applied in Tito's Yugoslavia and Mao's China.
>
> -None of them particularly much better succeded than Stalin policies, were
> them?

Well, there weren't mass famines in Tito's Yugoslavia, were there. And outside of a bolshevik frame work there are many things that could have been done which would have been vastly superior to stalinism.



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