Date: 08 Jan 97 16:46:36 EST
From: Chris Burford <100423.2040-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: Lenin on Cooperatives: comments


Lenin on Cooperatives 4th and 6th January 1923



This debate has come round several times, each time
of course at a higher level of quality.

But the ME archives do not have this late article by
Lenin, so it seemed valuable to make it 
readily available. Why?

Although late, with Lenin dying only just over a year later, 
it is clearly an article showing considerable intellectual
power, even if it raises a number of pregnant questions.

It is interesting for the usage of significant terms like
state capitalism and cultural revolution. It is also 
relevant for the debate about socialism in one country.

I cannot decide however many times I read it, whether 
it necessarily implies that socialism is the existence of a 
market of co-operative enterprises for at least several decades, 
if not indefinitely. But I think it can be read that way.
It could however be read that the co-operatives under socialism
are a much briefer stage so long as the will is there to move rapidly
to communes or to fully centralised state economic property.
As was attempted in both the Soviet Union and in China.


The article emphasises the importance of the struggle for state power,
without which co-operatives under capitalism are collective
capitalist institutions. But it does not explain what to do 
if the struggle for state power has been delayed by almost
a century. 

The single most thought provoking sentence for me is:

"A social system emerges only if it has the financial backing of a
definite class."

That seems to be the purpose of having state power in this context.
It raises the question of whether co-operatives 
in the context of a reformed financial system could be a relevant
strategic aim in the battle for state power. 

Or power on a global level, which imples struggle
over global financial institutions.


Chris Burford
London.



 


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