Workers World, Vol. 3 No. 19
Even if only a small portion of the glowing and inspiring prospects outlined in the new Soviet draft program were to become realizable in the reasonably near future, this would still constitute a most remarkable achievement for the USSR. Their very publication in the context of the present international situation is an indubitable basis for optimism, based on substantial material factors.
What capitalist government would even dare project free rent and a shorter work week – even in the remote future? On the contrary, a get-tough foreign policy by the richest imperialist democracy has as its invariable concomitant an even get-tougher policy on the living standards of the masses, of which Newburgh happens to be only a crass example.
When Kennedy enunciated his famous aphorism, “Do not ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?”, he didn’t wait long for any answers. Federal aid to education, better housing, retraining of workers and unemployed as a result of automation, have been buried deep amidst the hue and cry for more and more “defense” expenditures.
Considering the hysteria that’s being raised over Berlin, one can understand how both houses of Congress passed Kennedy’s military appropriation requests with supersonic speed, and left decade-old legislation calculated to help the needy, pigeon-holed in the very same Congressional committees. Some of this legislation was initiated years before the cold war began.
But to get back to the new Soviet program. If one were to read Part II of the document – the part that deals with The Tasks of Building a Communist Society, merely as a programmatic pronouncement, without reference to the specific stage of social evolution in which the USSR finds itself today, one could regard it with a great deal of skepticism, and perhaps even dismiss it as another political gesture to placate the masses.
But it is precisely the specific stage of evolution of the USSR which gives the document a certain amount of realism, which if tempered by the exigencies of the international situation, provides room for high hopes and confidence. The USSR today is militarily the strongest power precisely because socialist construction has reached such a high industrial and technological level as to make this possible.
Indeed, it is abundantly clear that the planned economy, after so many years of rich and varied experiences, has finally reached a level where the economic processes have become automatic.
It is not a question of mere nomenclature. If the economic processes or the forms of socialist planning have become so strong and powerful that they have imparted to the economy as a whole an automatic character, then it can be truly said that this marks a qualitative change, economically speaking, from the late 20s and 30s.
Even when economic planning was suspended at the outbreak of the Second World War, it did not mean that economic institutions and certain socialist forms were abandoned, or that conscious direction was absent, or that the free interplay of capitalist economic marketing processes took over. And when in 1946 planning was resumed, it took on an accelerated tempo, not only because of the tremendous effort of the Soviet people, but because during the whole course of the Second World War certain socialist forms and processes had matured and developed and operated as built-in accelerators for socialist development.
The counter-revolutionary Hungarian insurrection operated as a setback, and even forced the Soviet Union to scale down the rate of its capital construction. It must be remembered that the economic chaos resulting from the insurrection in Hungary not only reverberated throughout Eastern Europe, but had its effects in the USSR as well.
But while this very factor certainly proved that the economy could be forced to retreat under the impact of adverse political events, it at the same time proved that its operating principles were unshakable. October 4th, 1957 proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The chief characteristic of capitalist economy, aside from the private ownership of the means of production, is the anarchy inherent in its mode of production. The blind forces of the market operate independently of the will of the producers. In a socialist state, conscious direction and planning supplant this chaos and anarchy.
The planned direction of the Soviet economy on a nationwide scale did not begin until 1928 – with the inauguration of the first famous five-year plan. But the effects of the market economy – especially in a land which was overwhelmingly peasant in character – remained a factor to be reckoned with, and limited the scope of the planning.
Not until the productive forces had grown enormously, and mechanization, particularly on the collective farms, took on an accelerated rate, did the effects of the so-called “free” capitalist sector of the economy become so insignificant as to no longer jeopardize the fate of the socialist economy.
This does not mean that socially antagonistic groups do not exist in the Soviet Union, or that significant political decisions made by the leadership cannot adversely affect the tempo or the rate of growth and development of the Soviet economy. But it does mean that whatever new grouping of leaders from the same social stratum come into the presidium, whether they are to the right or to the left of Khrushchev, they cannot reverse the historic direction of the economy.
They may speed it up, or slow it down – they may have a more equitable or a less equitable distribution of the national income, but the automatic socialist character of the economy is firm and indestructible.
It is this new factor which gives force and effect to the program. Also, the tremendous progress made by China and the countries in Eastern Europe, all of whom have been aided by the USSR and have in turn aided the USSR, has made possible the tremendous progress of the Soviet Union in recent years.
The second part of the Soviet program should be greeted by every socialist as a refreshing and encouraging sign of internal developments in the Soviet Union.
Matters are somewhat different with the first part of the program, which deals with the international situation. There, one will not find any new development of appreciable significance.
It is important to note that the illusion of a peaceful road to socialism, voluntary disarmament by the imperialist states and peaceful co-existence with them for an indefinite period is reaffirmed – even if it is with qualifications. Compared to the Declaration of the 81 Parties issued in November, it gives the over-all effect of being somewhat milder in tone. Even if that were not so, the fact of the matter is that it does not herald a new message, or a new revolutionary orientation. It seems to restate what has been stated before. Its real meaning can only be assessed in the light of subsequent living events.
Above all, it must be remembered that the document is written in the midst of one of the most dangerous periods since the inception of the cold war. The imperialist powers, led by the Kennedy administration, have embarked on a new brinkmanship, which goes a long way in outdoing John Foster Dulles. No one can really know how close to the edge the imperialists have leaped in their mad drive to retain their privileged position as exploiters.
There is no doubt that Part I of the program was written with an eye to the current crisis, and rightly so. Therefore, the document must be read with that in view. Revolutionary socialists must not read it as the bourgeoisie and the Social Democratic lackeys would have them read it, but rather from the view of defenders of the socialist achievement of the USSR, China and Eastern Europe, who – no matter what the immediate vicissitudes of the USSR are, or whatever their difficulties – never lost sight of which side of the global class barricade they are on.
Last updated: 11 May 2026