MARX AND RUSSIA,.

Southland Times, Issue 25311, 14 June 1935, Page 11

MARX AND RUSSIA,.

To the Editor.

Dear Sir,—For the past eighteen years the question of Soviet Russia has continued to be of vital interest to the rest of the world. Rivers of ink a nd mountains of paper have been used by writers in books, periodicals, and. newspapers in criticisms, narratives, Press messages, etc. Fiction too, has not escaped, the revolution and subsequent events in Russia providing themes for many novels. By far the greatest part of this printed matter has had one thing in common, namely hostility to the United Socialist Soviet Republic. During the revolution and the wars of intervention this hostility was expressed in an open and crude torm. Any report coming from Riga, Helsingfors, or the European capitals was given prominent headlines in newspapers all over the world. Reports coming from the Soviet Republic were mostly stifled. In those days any person who dared to stand up for Soviet Russia was regarded as crazy. Karl Marx upon whose teachings this new society was based was regarded as a criminal madman. Much water has flowed under the bridge since that time. The Russian people just went on with the job, the first part of which was to drive out the armies of intervention which armies were supported Ly all the bigger capitalist nations. Then came the task of establishing civil order; but eventually a start was made in construction. This was a colossal task. Imagine a huge country like Russia, with a population of about 130 millions, after years of war and revolution, defending her frontiers against half a dozen armies at once, to be followed by anti-revolutionary wars. What a picture!. Railways, bridges, roads, towns and villages destroyed and industry at a standstill. What a nerve those Bolsheviks must have had to talk of constructing Socialism out of such an ash heap wmje millions were starving. But they had their visions. Lenin speaking to H. G. Wells at that time unfolded a plan for the electrification of Russia ( -Russia in the Shadows” by H. G. Wells). Wells called it “Lenin’s Utopia.” To-day in Russia Lenin’s dream of electrification is becoming fact. With the start and further development of the first Five Year Plan tangible results were achieved. The united Press outside, of Russia treated this plan with derision but with the continual visits of workers’ delegations and other interested persons from all over the world news of this great plan began to filter out until the “Five Year Plan” became a phrase used all over the world. Great successes were achieved in construction with continual rise in the material and cultural welfare of the workers. The success was more marked during the “Second Five Year Plan” and to-day the results of this plan are more widely known. Still the old hostility to the Soviet Union remains. Not the crude hostility of the earlier days, but of a more refined and subtle kind. Capitalist apologists admit a certain amount of success of the Soviet venture; but they say this is due to the fact that the Soviet authorities have thrown overboard the doctrines of Karl Marx, which they (the capitalist writers) profess to understand and in some measure to support. One would think from their criticisms that they were sorry this was the case and that if only the Soviet leaders had kept strictly to Marx they would give them their support. And so we have the spectacle of newspaper editors and others poring over the dusty volumes of Marx’s “Capital,” struggling hard and losing not a little sleep in the process. Which reminds me, Mr Editor, of your sub leader of June 10 entitled “Marx and Russia.” In keeping with others, you seem to have the idea that Marx formulated a programme or mapped out a plan for the building up of Socialism. Curiously enough Marx never attempted anything of the kind. His work was concerned with the examination of capitalist society, by disclosing certain contradictions inherent in the system which would eventually bring it to an end. Beyond this he did not go. Yet the chorus is: The Soviets are abandoning the Marxian plan, “are abandoning the essential lines laid down by Marx” and so on. In proof of this you state that “It will follow that the moment the wages paid, or the prices given for labour power, are varied between individuals the element of profit is introduced. ’’According to you this element of profit was also introduced by the different food scales introduced before Lenin’s ' New Economic Policy.” Now according to Marx’s “Labour Theory of Value, which you infer you agree with profits are not made as a result of the difference in the wages paid. Profits are made after all wages have been raid, out of the surplus value, created by the workers whilst producing commodities; in other words by exploiting them. The Soviet government absolutely prohibits this exploitation cf the workers. Again profits are not made simply by exchanging commodities in the market. It is necessary that they do exchange, but generally they exchange at their values. Some commodities may fetch a price above their values, others again below their values, but over the long run prices are equalized and commodities exchanged at their values. In Marx’s words “A community can no more live by higgling (buying and selling) in the market, than a community can by taking in each other’s washing.” No doubt Russia is a country with a vast leeway to make up, but with their socialist ship of State they are doing that fast. So, Mr Editor, you are still in that old class of anti-socialists who believe that Socialism is not possible owing to the individual character of the human mind. Are you aware of a certain factor in the development of the human mind called environment.. I can assure you that the Russian leaders are and have achieved wonderful alterations in the average Russian’s mind by deliberately altering their environment This method has been so successful that they have achieved what their critics considered to be almost impossible. They are succeeding in making the old-time individualistic minded peasant into a collective farmer. I am, etc., ECONOMIST NUMBER 2. '