What is the condition that has to be changed in order to avoid
the multifarious economic laws that blindly operate with such
destructive consequences under capitalism? The great contradiction
must be resolved between the social forces of production and the
capitalist relations of production that stem from private ownership
of the means of production. With the resolution of that
contradiction, socialism can begin to be built. Gradually the
various economic laws that now wreak havoc lose the fertile
conditions on which they operate, such as: the law of surplus value
and its fully developed expression, the law of maximum profit; the
law of average profit; the law of the falling rate of profit; the
law of competition and anarchy of production; the laws that emanate
from the contradictions between production and consumption, between
mental and manual labor, city and countryside, the quality and
quantity of labor, exchange-value and use-value, and the
contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; even the
law of value loses its scope of operation under socialism as
commodity production is more and more curtailed and all production
is brought under scientific socialist planning.
Scientific economic laws that have not been seen before find
fertile soil for their expression under socialism and must be
studied and consciously applied. The basic law of socialism is the
securing of the satisfaction of the constantly rising material and
cultural requirements of the whole of society through the
continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the
basis of higher techniques. Another law is the balanced
(proportionate) development of the national economy, from which the
science of economic planning and extended reproduction under
socialism flows.
The working class and peasantry seized political power from
the capitalist class and the remnants of the feudal aristocracy in
Russia in 1917. This revolution spread into the other nations that
eventually formed the Soviet Union in 1923. Relying on the economic
law that the relations of production must necessarily conform with
the character of the productive forces, the Soviet government,
under J.V. Stalin, socialized the means of production, made them
the property of the whole people, and thereby abolished the
exploiting system and created socialist forms of the economy.
One of the great discoveries that comes from the success of
building socialism in the Soviet Union is that as the productive
forces grow and extend into all regions, the economic law that the
relations of production must necessarily conform with the
productive forces comes to the fore once again. The operation of
this law under the conditions of socialism was little understood.
This was one of the major theoretical challenges of the 1950s and
the communist leadership that succeeded J.V. Stalin made no
progress on this front. What changes were necessary in the
relations of production to bring them into conformity with the
increasing socialization of the productive forces? The changes
dictated by the operation of this law were not discovered. The
social forces that objectively did not want to understand and give
full expression to this law were those in positions of authority in
the state and Party who were for capitalist restoration. They did
not want to give way to new leadership and methods of running the
country and the economy, to new relations of production. They
became an active opposition to the correct application of this law
of political economy. The relations of production in the Soviet
Union during the 1950s were never developed in conformity with the
productive forces, resulting in the strengthening of those forces
that were for the restoration of capitalism and the eventual
seizure of the social property by the new bourgeoisie.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
