The transition to socialism

communist economics, 1917–29

Karl Kautsky

pp. 286-315

in: M. C. Howard, J. E. King, A history of Marxian economics I, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1989

Abstract

The October revolution opened up a new chapter in Marxian political economy. The transition to socialism was placed on the agenda as a practical issue. Since there was little guidance to be found in the writings of either Marx and Engels, or in the work of the theorists of the Second International, Bolshevik thinkers were forced to develop an economics indicating how this could be accomplished. Innovation would have proved necessary in any event because the seizure of power had occurred on the periphery of world capitalism. As the Russian revolution was in a sense a "revolution against Capital,^l even the sparse Marxian heritage on the transition question was of limited relevance. Many of the revolutionaries were of course fully aware of the problems and justified their actions by a novel interpretation of their epoch (see Chapters 12 and 13 above). This was bluntly restated by Trotsky in the mid-1920s. "If world capitalism … should find a new dynamic equilibrium … this would mean that we were mistaken in our fundamental historical judgments. It would mean that capitalism had not yet exhausted its historic "mission" and that [imperialism] does not constitute a phase of capitalist disintegration." In consequence the Russian revolution would have to be regarded as "premature", and the transition to socialism doomed to failure.²