The American soviet government will take firm possession of the commanding heights of your business system: the banks, the key industries and the transportation and communication systems. It will then give the farmers, the small tradespeople and businessmen a good long time to think things over and see how well the nationalized section of industry is working.
The commanding heights - the corporatist controls of the reigns - leading the United States, step my step toward
socialism. Circa 1934, under the New Deal.
The most daring proposals of the Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization will seem childish compared to the new possibilities let loose by American communism.
Writing in 1934, Trotsky spoke of the "Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization" but this is not the official
Hoover Commission, which was not enacted until 1947. He was writing during Roosevelt. I'm not sure what he was referring to but Hoover
did talk about standardization and rationalization of the economy by business; he was influenced by
Tugwell (who, by the way, is very interesting - I am reading him right now - and I will post on him soon).
Trotsky imagined much more than we had in terms of planning, but he saw the potential within the New Deal. Indeed, as a step along the way:
In the United States, through the science of publicity and advertising, you have means for winning the support of your middle class that were beyond the reach of the soviets of backward Russia with its vast majority of pauperized and illiterate peasants. ... Even the intensity and devotion of religious sentiment in America will not prove an obstacle to the revolution. If one assumes the perspective of soviets in America, none of the psychological brakes will prove firm enough to retard the pressure of the social crisis. This has been demonstrated more than once in history. Besides, it should not be forgotten that the Gospels themselves contain some pretty explosive aphorisms.
As I have argued! Or anyway, that religion is not so far from communist Utopian dreaming... one could say the same about a Utopian dream of anarchy too, of course. Of course, Trotsky argued that the NRA was not in place in order to deliver communism (I would not argue that it had those conscious intentions either, for the most part) but that it would contain the seeds of its own crawl toward communism-- as it corrected itself with further intervention.
The NRA aims not to destroy but to strengthen the foundations of American capitalism by overcoming your business difficulties. Not the Blue Eagle but the difficulties that the Blue Eagle is powerless to overcome will bring about communism in America.
He then speaks about the public mind:
The “radical” professors of your Brain Trust are not revolutionists: they are only frightened conservatives. Your president abhors “systems” and “generalities.” But a soviet government is the greatest of all possible systems, a gigantic generality in action.
The average man doesn’t like systems or generalities either. It is the task of your communist statesmen to make the system deliver the concrete goods that the average man desires: his food, cigars, amusements, his freedom to choose his own neckties, his own house and his own automobile. It will be easy to give him these comforts in Soviet America.
I'm not sure that we abhor generalities; but certainly people respond to these materialist incentives. Choosing one's own necktie is not the first thing I think of when I think of "Soviet America" though; nor one's own house and automobile.
And then he describes the role of the monetary system, which once communism emerges, will not be initially used to control the economy - at that point, it should be stable:
Your almighty dollar will play a principal part in making your new soviet system work. It is a great mistake to try to mix a “planned economy” with a “managed currency.” Your money must act as regulator with which to measure the success or failure of your planning.
Your “radical” professors are dead wrong in their devotion to “managed money.” It is an academic idea that could easily wreck your entire system of distribution and production. That is the great lesson to be derived from the Soviet Union, where bitter necessity has been converted into official virtue in the monetary realm.
There the lack of a stable gold ruble is one of the main causes of our many economic troubles and catastrophes. It is impossible to regulate wages, prices and quality of goods without a firm monetary system. An unstable ruble in a Soviet system is like having variable molds in a conveyor-belt factory. It won’t work.
Only when socialism succeeds in substituting administrative control for money will it be possible to abandon a stable gold currency. Then money will become ordinary paper slips, like trolley or theater tickets. As socialism advances, these slips will also disappear, and control over individual consumption – whether by money or administration – will no longer be necessary when there is more than enough of everything for everybody!
Through stable money will socialism slip into pure communism. Some intriguing ideas in Trotsky. I forgot how much I enjoy him. More Trotsky to come!
Labels: corporatism, Marxism, NRA, Trotsky
