Leon Trotsky

“ After eleven years of proletarian dictatorship it appears that the kulak is the “economic authority of the village,” that “he has the possibility of drawing the middle peasant behind him” -- the middle peasant who, while continuing to be the central village figure from the numerical standpoint, finds himself held on the economic leash of the kulak. ”

“ This unexpected article, written under the direct pressure of the crisis in grain collections, announced:
“Among a whole number of causes which have determined the difficulties experienced in grain collections, it is necessary to single out the following. The village has expanded and enriched itself. Above all it is the kulak who has expanded and enriched himself. Three years of good crops have not passed without leaving their mark.” ”

“ More than once before in history has the proletarian vanguard, or even the vanguard of the vanguard, paid with its own destruction for a new step forward by its class or for checking an offensive by its enemies. ”

“ Had the socialist sector grown more rapidly than the non-socialist during these three years of good harvests, we might perhaps have still had a commercial and industrial crisis, manifesting itself in a surplus of products of state industry that could not find agricultural equivalents. Instead, we have had a crisis in grain collections, which the February 15 issue of Pravda correctly explains as the result of the accumulation of the agricultural products on the part of the peasantry and especially the kulaks, products for which there were lacking equivalents in industrial goods. ”

“ In what else does the art of leadership consist if not in being able to grasp a danger in time, that is to say, when it is still “in its first stages,” and to prevent the possibility of its further development? To lead is to foresee -- not to persecute those who are able to foresee. ”

“ Within the confines of village economy we took the kulak, once again not as an isolated phenomenon, but in connection with his economic influence upon the more prosperous layers of the middle peasants and the village as a whole. Finally we took these two fundamental internal processes, not as isolated, but in their relation with the world market, which through export and import exerts an ever more determining influence upon the tempo of our economic development. ”

“ The Opposition replied :
“In the course of recent years industry developed too slowly, lagging behind the development of national economy as a whole. ... Owing to this, the dependence of state economy on kulak and capitalist elements is growing in the domain of raw materials, in export, and in foodstuffs.” ”

“ We must recognize that the retreat has proved to be inadequate, that it is necessary to execute a supplementary retreat, a further retreat in the course of which we will pass from state capitalism to the creation of purchases, of sales, and of monetary circulation regulated by the state. That is why we are in the situation of men who still continue to be forced to retreat in order finally to pass to the offensive at a further stage. ”

“ We are here dealing with a political force in which the kulak is already taking part, even if only partially. However, the very necessity of resorting to emergency methods from the arsenal of war communism is evidence precisely of an unfavorable change in the relationship of forces within the sphere of economic life.
But there is still another criterion which is equally decisive and even more important: the material condition of the working class. If it is true that the national economy is growing (and this is true) ”

“ Not a single worker can posit a “predominance,’ of this sort of socialist elements over those of growing capitalism, when the standard of living of the non-proletarian elements is rising while that of the proletarian elements is on the decline. ”

“ The question is resolved by the dynamic relationship between two struggling forces: socialism and capitalism -- who will vanquish whom? The kulak is either “terrifying” or “harmless” depending solely upon the direction in which this relationship shifts. The manifesto of the C.C. vainly seeks to salvage, in this section, the resolution of the Fifteenth Congress, which proceeded from the alleged constantly growing preponderance of socialist elements in economy over the capitalist elements. ”

“ It is precisely against such proceedings that Lenin had warned all his life, and especially in the Autumn of 1921 when it became necessary to continue and deepen the retreat begun in the Spring.
“It is not the defeat which is so dangerous,” said Lenin in the above quoted speech at the Moscow District Conference, “as the fear of admitting one’s defeat, the fear of drawing from it all the conclusions.... We must not be afraid of admitting defeats. We must learn from the experience of the defeats. ”

“ The smychka is threatened at this moment by the lag in industry, on the one hand, and by the growth of the kulak, on the other. The lack of industrial products is driving a wedge between country and city. In the political and economic domains, the kulak is beginning to dominate the middle and poor peasants, opposing them to the proletariat. ”

“ Statistics provide a momentary cross-section of the processes, without catching their tendencies. Herein theory must come to our assistance. Our correct theoretical evaluation of the dynamics of the process predicted beforehand that the lag in industry will turn even the good crops against socialist construction and engender the growth of the kulak in the village and breadlines in the cities. ”

“ But even if we were to set aside the accommodating nature of statistics, which like all other things suffer from the arbitrariness of the apparatus, there still remains the fact that statistics, especially among us, given the extreme atomization of the most important processes, are always belated. ”

“ If we adopt the opinion that by admitting defeats we induce despondency and a weakening of energy for the struggle, similar to a surrender of positions, me would have to say that such revolutionists are absolutely not worth a damn.... ”

“ Our strength in the past was, as it will remain in the future, that we can take the heaviest defeats into account with perfect coolness, learning from their experience what must be modified in our activity. ”

“ It is not at all a question of measuring, quantitatively and with precision, this most complex and extensive process as we march along, but it is necessary to determine its quality, that is to say, to show in what direction the phenomena are growing. ”