Premier Joseph Stalin: is seen receiving a warm greeting from a Moscow school girl, Vera

-Kondakova, at this year’s May Day celebrations. At right is G- M. Malenkov and, at left, Marshal

Nikolai Bulganin.

From socialism

\

to communism

What Stalin really said

LT ie Tl (RBBB

JRE great thing about Marx-

ism, ‘about scientific social- ism, is that it is no arid and Static dogma. It is a guide to

action — and one that lives, &tows and develops as events develop.

This is illustrated in the most Masterly and striking fashion in Stalin’s new work, “The Econ- Mic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,’ which has just ap-. beared in Bolshevik, the famous theoretical fortnightly magazine Of the Soviet Communist party.

This work ‘hag received wide Journalistic attention through- Sut the world, but its character and significance have so far

erly been adequately present- e

Its essential point was simply DUt in’ this editorial comment

Y Pravda:

‘‘Ror the first time in Marx-

‘ist literature Stalin has an-

alysed the character of the

€conomic laws of ‘socialism and has defined the basic con-

ditions of the gradual transi- tion from socialism to com- ~ Munism.”

Stalin has in fact made the Most important new contribu- tion to Marxist theory since the

first publication of Lenin’s Im- lism, nearly 40 years ago; 8Nd at the outset it is of some Interest to consider the precise Hecumstances of this contribu- On,

Here we have an outstanding heoretical development whose ighly practical origin was a iscussion, at top-level in the Ommunist Party of the Soviet hion and with the participation Sf a number of leading econo- Mists, of the draft of a new Standard textbook of Marxist Political economy. ty The work is not, as has been Teported, a 50-page article in

By ALLAN HUTT

Bolshevik. It is a series of four documents, aggregating that number of pages (some 25,000- odd words). The first, of 25 pages, is by way of being Stal- in’s summing-up of the discus- sion which took place last No- vember; it is entitled ‘‘Obser- vations on economic questions connected with the November, 1951 discussion,” and was cir- culated last» February to all who took part in the discussion.

There follow three replies to communications from various economists, of which the longest (14 pages) demolishes ‘The mistakes of Comrade L, D. Yar- oshenko.”’

This last document contains some of the most important for- mulations of the whole series

f x

and will assuredly go into’ his- tory as one of the great master- pieces of Marxist-Leninist pole- mical swordsmanship,

The reader will have to await the English text to appreciate the full flavor of this shattering polemic; but one point may be

_ noted immediately, for it is an interesting comment on the re- ality of inner-party democracy in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. ;

Yaroshenke, an un-Marxist ‘muddlehead of the most prepos- terous kind, appears to have bombarded the party’s political bureau with letters complaining that Stalin had not dealt fairly with him in the discussion, ob- jecting to certain formulations of Stalin’s, and so on. |

There is no suggestion that he was not fully entitled to do so; he is dealt with, not on his raising of the issues but on the issues raised.

*

It is typical of Stalin’s genius that his vital new definitions are not uttered as oracular sayings, but are arrived at only as the result of a detailed and scientific clearing of the ground.

Thus the reader reaches the definitions after an invaluable process of education (or re-edu- cation) in fundamental Marxist principle and approach.

From the first paragraph of the first document, the ‘Obser- vations,’’ the serenely scientific and objective nature of the anal- ysis is evident—together with the extreme care in definition and the drawing of distinctions and the constantly concrete character of every phrase of the exposition (the “realistic out- look” insisted-on by Marx).

As all this is done with Stal- in’s superb simplicity of thought and language—his style nowa- days seems even simpler than ever—its study is a’ real pleas- ure, indeed an excitement.

The illiterate London Dafly Mail comment that these 50 pages were “mostly unreadable” merely showed that the writer was totally ignorant of Stalin’s writings in general and of this new work in particular,

*

Stalin begins with a simple demonstration of the objective nature of economic laws, show- ing that they continue under so- cialism as under. capitalism. Be- cause the working e¢lass is in power new “laws”? cannot just be dreamed up; the thing is to understand, to master, economic laws and then make use of them for the benefit of society.

He then discusses how com- modity production and circula-

“tion — production of goods for

sale on the market — continue under socialism. He warns the reader in detail against the dan- ger of confusing commodity production with capitalism, while emphasizing that commod- ity production is not compatible with the transition to commun- ism,

He continues with an examin-

ation of the operation of the laws of value under socialism. He quotes an example of failure to take it into account, which might have had serious results when certain economic admin- istrators fixed an identical price per ton for cotton and grain— and baked bread.

He goes on to analyze in de- tail the question of the ending of the distinction between town and country and between men- tal and manual labor. :

This last is a question of first- rate importance on which much thinking remains to be done, he emphasises, adding. that only the essential distinctions, not every distinction, can be abol- ished.

There follows the important, analysis of the world situation:

+ The development of the two parallel world markets;

+ The worsening of the gen- eral crisis of world capitalism;

+ The inevitability of wars between capitalist countries;

+ The inevitability of coun- tries like Britain and France having to shake themselves free of American domination;

+ The connection of imperi- alism and war and the role of the world peace movement,

Stalin then proceeds to out- line the basic economic law of present-day monopoly capital- ism. It is not a question of the laws of value or surplus value, of average profit or even of super-profit.

It is a question of the secur- ing of maximum profit, ‘‘by means of the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the ma- jority of the population of a given country, by means of the enslavement and systematic rob- bery of the peoples ‘of other countries, particularly backward countries, by means of wars and the militarization of the nation-

al economy.”

With this he brilliantly con- trasts his definitions of the basic economic law of socialism:

“Guaranteeing the makxi- mum satisfaction of the con- stantly growing material and cultura] needs of the whole of society by means of the uninterrupted growth and perfecting of Socialist produc- tion on the basis of the high- est technique.” Thus:

“Instead of guaranteeing maximum profits—guarantee- ing the maximum satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of society;

“Instead — of ment of production with boom-slump, slump-boom in- terruptions—the uninterrupt- ed growth of production;

“Instead of periodical in- terruptions in the develop- ment of technique, bringing with them the destruction of the productive forces of so- ciety—the uninterrupted per- fecting of production on the basis of the highest tech- nique.”

“The aim of socialist produc- tion,” he sums it up in a later passage, “is not profit, but man, with his needs.”

@ This is the first of two ar- ticles by Allan Hutt. The sec-

ond will appear in our next issue.

the develop-

Yippee! cry overseas cattle kings

ee production and the vast grazing grounds of Austra- lia’s Northern Territory have become the object of intense, rivalry between British and Am erican vested interests.

British interests clamoring for renewal of their leases by the federal government are being opposed by the Swift-Kleberg monopoly, which is conducting a high pressure propaganda campaign to further its econ- omic penetration of the coun- try.

Nearly 40, percent of the area of the Northern Territory is con- trolled by a handful of com- panies, :

British meat monopolies — Vesteys and Bovril—have held virtually unchallenged sway over the northern areas for years. To maintain their,super profits they have exploited the Jand so ruthlessly that it is now almost barren.

Swifts, the U.S. meat monop-

oly, has been operating in Aus-.

tralia for some years. Over a long period it has been linked with the Angliss Australian con- cern. In the U.S. itself. it is linked with King Ranch, Texas, owned by millionaire Robert J. Kleberg, jr.

Kleberg is famous for having developed the Santa Gertrudis breed of beef cattle, claimed to be particularly suitable to Aus- tralian conditions.. Now, on be- half of the U.S. monopoly he represents, Kileberg is establish- ing cattle stations in Queens- land and is casting a covetous eye on Northern Territory graz- ing lands. ;

Business Week, the influential U.S. magazine, reports that Kle- berg will own 85 percent of a 76,000-acre breeding farm at Risdon and hold a 25 percent interest in a 157,000-acres com mercial ranch in Queensland.

It is no coincidence that Kle- berg arrived in Australia just around the time the federal gov- ernment was considering renew- al of British-held cattle leases in the Northern Territory.

Nor was it a coincidence that around this time the Australian daily press devoted considerable space to. despairing the waste and neglect of the cattle indus- try and grazing lands. All the “experts’’ reached the same con- clusion: that the cattle industry should be developed by encour- aging more foreign investments that that the way to encourage these investments. was to under- take government transportation and irrigation projects variously estimated to cost between $110 and $300 million.

There is no doubt that the American beef barons would de- nude the grazing lands as ruth- lessly as their British counter- parts and that any government

PACIFIC TRIBUNE —

expenditures undertaken to pro- mote their penetration would go to swell their super-profits. However, while British and American monopolies vie for

control of the grazing lands,

there is also strong opposition, particularly within the Country party, to American penetration, not from any desire to protect the interests of the Australian people but in“order to save the lands for native Australian cap- italists.

Sections of the labor move- ment are pressing for cancella- tion of the cattle leases to vested interests and demanding that no further leases be granted to for- eign monopolies. Their counter- proposal is for establishment of state stations in the Northern Territory to promote scientific development of the cattle indus- try and the territory in the in- terests of the Australian people themselves. :

OCTOBER 24, 1952 — PAGE 9