Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 20:50:51 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: M-TH: Architectural Design and Capitalism


Gerald Levy wrote:


>...This faith in the power of machinery -- to revolutionize the
>means of production and develop socialist relations -- was also shared by
>most of the Bolsheviks. Lenin once, for instance, gave the following
>unique definition of communism: "Communism is the power of electricity."

That's not how I remember--and therefore understand-- Lenin's famous
epigram. What I recall is that Lenin, asked by a journalist "what is this
socialism you are building?" replied "socialism is soviet power plus
electrification of the whole country."  This was a really profound
thought--it combined the political essence of socialism *exercise of
political power by workers and farmers through their own democratic
representative institutions*, the economic essence of socialism *planned
economic development on the largest scale  centering its priority on the
issue most important  for the whole economy* and the cultural essence of
socialism *making the highest achievements of human culture the common
property of the whole people*.  And it was the last point that was crucial
for Lenin.  Only by providing electric power to every house in every
village over the immense expanse of the Soviet Union could the small
proletarian minority (remember, this was 1921-1922) expect to raise the
peasant masses from their deep cultural backwardness, isolation,
illiteracy, superstition, raise them to the level of conscious and
voluntary participants in a collectivist effort of historic scope.

Stalin, of course, had the completely opposite outlook--one of total
contempt for the ordinary peasants and workers.  His stance on
electrification was expressed in a famous quip at a 1926 central-committee
meeting, in scoffing at Trotsky (then commissar for electrification) who
proposed construction of the huge Dneproges dam and hydroelectric power
plant.  Building Dneproges, he joked, would be like "a peasant who, after
having saved some extra money, instead of improving his farm bought a
phonograph and--went broke."  Of course, Stalin later ordered the building
of Dneproges--but not exactly to provide peasants with radios and
gramophones.

The issue of electrification is still very much on the agenda, in the form
of the "energy problem."  And I would say, in all seriousness, that the
central historical mission of socialism is *solar electrification of the
whole planet*.

Shane




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