By Marcelo Vieta, published on The Bullet, July 18, 2012
(And see further below: Vladimir Lenin, ‘On Cooperation’)
Almost instantly upon arriving in Cuba in late June of 2011, I noticed the wherewithal of its people, especially their tenacity to get by on little. In many ways, I discovered, Cubans have already been forging an alternative socio-economic reality for decades now. For instance, we can think of how they revolutionized their agricultural sector during and after the Special Period, making Cuba the first nation to adopt a predominantly organic farming sector rooted in agricultural co-ops and the notion of subsidiarity (i.e., economic activity with a strong focus on the local and managed by local people).
The Potential for a Boom in Co-operatives
The two conferences I presented at in June 2011 were exceptional, if ultimately a bit surprising. First, I participated in the “Corporate Social Responsibility, Cooperatives, and Local Development” conference on June 21 with a diverse group of co-op practitioners, social entrepreneurs, and social and solidarity economy researchers from different parts of Latin America and Canada, organized in part by the University of Havana’s Centre for Studies on the Cuban Economy, a Latin American NGO called Fundación AVINA, and American social entrepreneur Eric Leenson.
At this first conference I presented some of the results of my ethnographic and political economic work with Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (worker-recuperated enterprises, or ERTs). Many Cuban academics and officials working with co-ops and local development initiatives in attendance seemed to be fascinated with the experiences of workers taking over businesses in trouble in Argentina, based on their comments to me afterwards. They were interested to know more about how to make autogestión (self-management) work in a country that has had no real experience with co-operatives in general outside of agriculture, a sector where they have engaged in promising experiments with Cooperativas de Crédito y Servicio and Cooperativas de Producción Agropecuarias (producer and consumer co-ops in the farming sector also known as CCS and CCP respectively) and Unidades Básicas de Producción Cooperativa (worker-run and state owned co-operatives that service the agricultural sector, known also as UBPC) (Piñeiro Harnecker, 2011a). These Cuban academics and officials I spoke with looked at the experiences of Argentina’s workers starting co-ops from scratch as similar to what many Cubans might have to embark on in the next months and years. This is especially the case, they shared with me, given that hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers will be transitioned from “empleo estatal” (“state employment”) to “empleo no-estatal” (“non-state employment”) over the next few years.
Indeed, the vision of the nuevos lineamientos of the Cuban Communist Party is to increase the non-state employment sector from 16 per cent of Cuba’s workforce (2010 figures) to 35 per cent of Cuban workers by 2015. This would mean that in three years, if this projection holds, Cuba will have 1.8 million non-state workers employed either as cuentapropistas (the self-employed), trabajadores asalariados (salaried workers), or cooperativistas (cooperators) (Piñeiro Harnecker, 2011a).
While many of these new, non-state workers have the potential of eventually working in an expanded, non-rural co-operative sector, they could equally be employed in an expanding private sector. There is room in the economic reforms for a boom in private businesses, as well (sections 11 to 24 of the lineamientos), together with a continuation of “state-funded entities” (sections 30 to 34). Regardless, it is also undeniable that sections 25 to 29 of the lineamientos leave ample room for the potential mushrooming of the co-operative movement. “Grade 1 co-operatives,” section 25 begins: “shall be established as a socialist form of joint ownership in various sectors. A co-operative is a business organization that owns its estate and represents a distinct legal person. Its members are individuals who contribute assets or labour and its purpose is to supply useful goods and services to society and its costs are covered with its own income.”
While there are, as yet, no guarantees that a boom in “Grade 1 co-operatives” will necessarily emerge, there is growing interest afoot in Cuba to encourage such a new, non-agricultural co-operative sector. The strong language on co-ops in the lineamientos is offering much inspiration to some in this regard. But the interest in co-ops extends far beyond the decrees of the lineamientos. One Cuban professor suggested to me that co-operatives could take over the economy in sectors such as food provisioning, consumer services, housing, and sanitation. Another group of Cuban researchers I spoke with believe that worker co-operatives of all stripes could particularly blossom in areas such as tourism, public transportation, manufacturing, and community services. “In the short term,” reads section 217 of the lineamientos, “the industrial productions shall be re-oriented to meet the demands from different forms of production (particularly co-operatives and self-employees).”
What are some of the lingering concerns amongst some Cubans that aspire to expand the co-operative sector, then? The general answer given to me by co-op developers and researchers was that Cubans lack knowledge in co-operative organizing and values. Yes, they underscored, many Cubans do indeed have experience with agricultural co-ops or urban agricultural co-ops (organopónicos), and most have been involved in “popular power” initiatives, or with community-based committee experiences for some time. But most of these experiences, I was told, have been, up till now, top-down or party-led.
The Cubans I talked with during my first visit in June 2011 wanted mostly to know how to co-operatively organize and practically manage themselves bottom-up, and how to start teaching each other the ins-and-outs of forming co-operatives “from below,” from out of their own initiatives. From Cubans that I spoke with, there is, on the one hand, a pragmatic sense that they must know how to manage themselves better and produce adequately without government quotas and such. At the same time, we discussed and debated how exactly the “non-state” sector might emerge in Cuba, as well as the virtues of co-operatives and the risks of opening up their economy to free markets and outright capital-based and investor-owned firms. During these conversations, I tried to focus on my observation that, given what I know of the explosion of the social and solidarity economy in other parts of Latin America in recent years, Cubans too could make a go of a non-state enterprise sector that still respects key aspects of their socialist project by thinking about “co-operativizing” their economy. This would include co-operative production, co-operative service delivery, co-operative exchange or “markets,” and co-operative banks or credit unions. Moreover, we agreed, this would allow Cubans to hold on to much of the social values and collaborative spirit they already have within their existing version of socialism.
The Potential for a Social and Solidarity Economy
The second conference I presented was at the Centre for Studies on the Cuban Economy (CEEC in Spanish). It was their annual conference of mostly Cuban economists, government officials, and municipal development officials. This conference was a slightly different but equally rewarding experience. There, I gave what I thought was a straightforward conceptual definition of the “social and solidarity economy.” In this presentation, I made an effort to bridge Canadian, European, and Latin American conceptualizations while connecting notions of the social and solidarity economy to actual on-the-ground experiences in Latin America. Drawing from these traditions, in this presentation I defined the social and solidarity economy as:
“…social and economic practices and organizations that are not investor-owned or for-profit entities (although its organizations can make and draw on surpluses), nor government-owned or controlled (although its organizations may receive government funding), and that operate with the values of provisioning, first and foremost, for the socioeconomic needs of members. Known also loosely as the ‘third sector,’ social and solidarity economy organizations tend to have social objectives (such as sustaining and creating jobs, provisioning less expensive or environmentally sound consumer goods and services, facilitating the social or economic capacities of individuals and communities, etc.) and are usually organized in some sort of democratic fashion where each member has a vote or say in the operation, governance, and goals of the firm.”
The Cubans that listened to my presentation were very interested to know more about the social and solidarity economy but seemed not to be as familiar on the whole with a working definition of the concept. This was the case, as some Cuban academics told me, because they haven’t needed such a concept until now with a Cuban state and economy that is already “socialist” and “socialized.” This was surprising to me at first, especially given Cuba’s already-existing social economic practices that in many ways have been part of their daily reality for decades now. Think, for example, of their mostly do-it-yourself and community-based car parts manufacturing and repair shops, or the common practice throughout Cuba of sharing scarce commodities and products amongst neighbours.
Here some rich debates emerged amongst us concerning the terms socialized, social, and socialist; how a social and solidarity economy is different or similar to what Cubans have been practicing under state socialism; and how such conceptualizations of the social and solidarity economy could help Cubans think about a new socialism that connects the broad economic reforms the Party is proposing with the everyday practices of Cuban people. Conceiving of the “non-state” sector as a social and solidarity economy could also prove to be a softer landing for the hundreds of thousands of state workers that are expected to become (without a clear transition plan so far, it seems to me) cooperativistas and cuentapropistas.
Challenges, Tensions, and Possibilities for a Co-operative Economy in Cuba
The release of the “Draft Guidelines” of the economic reforms in the fall of 2010, and the promising public consultations that were had between December 2010 and February 2011 with over 1 million Cubans in the process of developing the lineamientos, has, most certainly, committed Cuba to a massive reform of the economy such as it has never seen before. Cuba is, in a word, at a crossroads right now. There will definitely be room for a new kind of economy where “non-state enterprises” will be a reality sooner rather than later over the next three to five years. This will include a new Cuban entrepreneurial class, a larger class of cuentapropistas, a much larger class of salaried workers, and – potentially – a substantial social and solidarity economic sector populated by many co-operatives.
Whether a new private sector will dominate the new Cuban economy, or whether Cuba turns primarily to a new socialized economy rooted in co-operatives, remains to be seen. Certainly, Section 1 of the lineamientos (concerning Cuba’s new “Economic Management Model”) leaves interpretive room for either, although the preamble to the lineamientos could arguably align more easily with a social economy made up of co-operatives:
“The economic system that shall prevail will continue to be based on the people’s socialist ownership over the fundamental means of production, governed by the socialist principle of distribution: ‘from each according to his/her capacity to each according to his/her contribution.’”
Whichever way Cuba heads, and based on the open way these economic reforms are being discussed in Cuba right now (including in the daily Granma by the actual Party), these reforms will potentially be broader and more transformative than the reforms that emerged during and immediately after the Special Period in the early 1990s.
Some economists that presented at the CEEC conference, for example, are pushing for the quick introduction of these reforms and talk liberally of increasing the space for cuentapropistas (the self-employed, which also includes entrepreneurs and employers) and allowing for a Cuban-owned and -run private sector that will be able to hire employees other than family members. Indeed, this view is in line with sections 11 to 24 of the lineamientos. Some of the economists I heard, inspired by the Chinese model of economic growth, talk as if some sort of a broader private sector is an unavoidable reality, necessary for the increased productivity and innovation needed in Cuba, they argue, in order to lift it out of its developing country status. The major indicators being used by these economists is economic growth, GDP, investment-to-profit ratios, and so on. This can be straight-up neoclassical stuff and risks putting Cuba on the path of yet one more former socialist country that opens up its economy to unbridled markets. Moreover, the Cuban government is, as I write, also expanding its list of permissible private sector firms.
But on the whole, opening up the Cuban economy more and more to straight up capital-labour relations and free markets is, I believe, the most perilous part of the suggested reforms and what might very well put Cuba’s many socialist gains (i.e., free health care, excellent public education, low poverty rates, low crime rates, virtually no unemployment, subsidized housing, public transportation, etc.) at most risk of eventually evaporating into a market-driven system.
The degree of inter-firm competition that this new economy could involve is particularly unclear. And what of the characteristics of a new wage-based labour market that will be needed to supply employees to private firms, where the labour-power of a new class of “productive” workers would become one of Cuba’s newest commodities and where out-and-out surplus-value extraction and capital accumulation would be the prime mover for more and more privatized firms and economic sectors? Surprisingly, there is very little mention of such basic socialist concepts and critiques from some of the Cuban economists I have heard and read in the past year.
Another set of issues posed by some Cuban economists and co-operative developers is how production inputs will be provisioned in a non-state sector. They realize that some sort of wholesale market will be needed, for instance, but are not clear about its make-up. This has been traditionally handled by state quotas in Cuba. How will the non-state sector adapt to supply and demand constraints? Will a production input and supplies market be driven and regulated by price-indicators for new non-state businesses to capitalize, or will state planning still be maintained there? Both of these scenarios have their downsides for a potential co-operative economy. And what is the role of foreign businesses and suppliers? The issue of what type of consumer markets will emerge is equally vague still. Finally, if the Cuban government’s plan is to transition former state-employees to the new “non-state” economic sector and, in so doing, increase the country’s non-state workers by as much as a fifth by 2015, how exactly will this transition happen and how will the Cuban state guarantee the lineamientos’ and Raul Castro’s repeated assurances that “no one will be left unprotected” in the process?
All of these questions remain without clear answers to most Cubans I spoke with. But what is clear is that co-operatives will surely be allowed to emerge outside of the agricultural sector as service, consumer, housing, and worker co-operatives. There is, moreover, a pending law of co-operatives that is being written right now, set to be released sometime this year, that should clarify to what degree the government is expecting co-operatives to take a leading role in the new non-state economic sector (Piñeiro Harnecker, 2012).
In sum, from the countless conversations I had while in Cuba with academics, government workers, co-operators, and people on the street, many Cubans are very willing to contemplate and consider the role of a larger co-operative sector. There is no doubt that many Cubans are working hard to make this a reality in the coming months and years. My sense is that many – perhaps the majority – of Cubans know that they have too much to lose to go down the neoliberal path, a distinct possibility given the trajectory of other ‘socialist’ command economies, and the structural reforms that are unfolding. The co-operative path to economic sustainability would, I think, be a viable alternative development model for many key sectors of the Cuban economy. Such a development model would keep social wealth within the country and expand the capacities of Cuban workers in self-management. Such activism and participation among workers can also be a key spur to the nature of reforms in crucial areas where large state enterprises will remain, whether fully state owned or in joint enterprises. The co-operative road to reforms, most importantly, could help conserve the successes of Cuba’s brand of socialism, notably its egalitarian education, cultural and health sectors, which remain quite unique across South America and the Caribbean. At the same time, such co-operative-based reforms could help Cuba move along a new path toward 21st century socialism.
Marcelo Vieta recently completed his PhD. from York University’s Program in Social and Political Thought with a dissertation looking at the innovations, challenges, and political economic conjunctures of Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (worker-recuperated enterprises). He is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Trento’s European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (EURICSE) in Trento, Italy. Marcelo can be reached at: marcelo.vieta@euricse.eu or marcelo@vieta.ca.
Additional References on Cuba’s new co-operatives:
- Holm, Wendy. (2011). “Report on the outcomes of an informal Havana dialogue between co-op thought leaders from Cuba, Canada, the United States, and Scotland,” 12-16 December.
- Piñeiro Harnecker, Camila. (2011a). Empresas no estatales en la economía cubana: potencialidades, requerimientos y riesgos. Working Paper, Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana.
- Piñeiro Harnecker, Camila. (2011b). Y las cooperatives, cuando? Potencialidades de las cooperativas para la actualización del modelo económico cubano, Palabra Nueva, October.
- Piñeiro Harnecker, Camila. (2011c). (Ed.), Cooperativas y socialismo: Una Mirada desde cuba. Havana: Editorial Caminos. [The Spanish preface to the book can be found here. An English preface can be found here. An English translation of the book is forthcoming.]
- Piñeiro Harnecker, Camila. (2012). Ahora que sí van las cooperativas, vamos a hacerlo bien. Rebelión, 2 March.
- Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. (2011). Resolution on the Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution, 18 April. [The new social and economic lineamientos (guidelines) of the Sixth Party Congress of Cuba.]
Appendix (not from original article above)
On Cooperation
By Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Written January 4 & 6, 1923.
First published: Pravda (No. 115-116), May 26-27, 1923
It seems to me that not enough attention is being paid to the cooperative movement in our country. Not everyone understands that now, since the time of the October revolution and quite apart from NEP (on the contrary, in this connection we must say-because of NEP), our cooperative movement has become one of great significance. There is a lot of fantasy in the dreams of the old cooperators. Often they are ridiculously fantastic. But why are they fantastic? Because people do not understand the fundamental, the rock-bottom significance of the working-class political struggle for the overthrow of the rule of the exploiters. We have overthrown the rule of the exploiters, and much that was fantastic, even romantic, even banal in the dreams of the old cooperators is now becoming unvarnished reality.
Indeed, since political power is in the hands of the working-class, since this political power owns all the means of production, the only task, indeed, that remains for us is to organize the population in cooperative societies. With most of the population organizing cooperatives, the socialism which in the past was legitimately treated with ridicule, scorn and contempt by those who were rightly convinced that it was necessary to wage the class struggle, the struggle for political power, etc., will achieve its aim automatically. But not all comrades realize how vastly, how infinitely important it is now to organize the population of Russia in cooperative societies. By adopting NEP we made a concession to the peasant as a trader, to the principal of private trade; it is precisely for this reason (contrary to what some people think) that the cooperative movement is of such immense importance. All we actually need under NEP is to organize the population of Russia in cooperative societies on a sufficiently large-scale, for we have now found the degree of combination of private interest, of private commercial interest, with state supervision and control of this interest, that degree of its subordination to the common interests which was formerly the stumbling block for very many socialists. Indeed, the power of the state over all large-scale means of production, political power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured proletarian leadership of the peasantry, etc. – is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society out of cooperatives, out of cooperatives alone, which we formerly ridiculed as huckstering and which from a certain aspect we have the right to treat as such now, under NEP? Is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society? It is still not the building of socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for it.
It is this very circumstance that is underestimated by many of our practical workers. They look down upon cooperative societies, failing to appreciate their exceptional importance, first, from the standpoint of principal (the means of production are owned by the state), and, second, from the standpoint of transition to the new system by means that are the simplest, easiest and most acceptable to the peasant.
But this again is a fundamental importance. It is one thing to draw out fantastic plans for building socialism through all sorts of workers associations, and quite another to learn to build socialism in practice in such a way that every small peasant could take part in it. That is the very stage we have now reached. And there is no doubt that, having reached it, we are taking too little advantage of it.
We went too far when we reintroduced NEP, but not because we attached too much importance to the principal of free enterprise and trade – we want too far because we lost sight of the cooperatives, because we now underrate cooperatives, because we are already beginning to forget the vast importance of the cooperatives from the above two points of view.
I now propose to discuss with the reader what can and must at once be done practically on the basis of this “cooperative” principle. By what means can we, and must we, start at once to develop this “cooperative” principle so that its socialist meaning may be clear to all?
Cooperation must be politically so organized that it will not only generally and always enjoy certain privileges, but that these privileges should be of a purely material nature (a favorable bank rate, etc.). The cooperatives must be granted state loans that are greater, if only by a little, than the loans we grant to private enterprises, even to heavy industry, etc.
A social system emerges only if it has the financial backing of a definite class. There is no need to mention the hundreds of millions of rubles that the birth of “free” capitalism cost. At present we have to realize that the cooperatives system is a social system we must now give more than ordinary assistance, and we must actually give that assistance. But it must be it assistance in the real sense of the word, i.e., it will not be enough to interpret it to mean assistance for any kind of cooperative trade; by assistance we must mean aid to cooperative trade in which really large masses of the population actually take part. It is certainly a correct form of assistance to give a bonus to peasants who take part in cooperative trade; but the whole point is to verify the nature of this participation, to verify the awareness behind it, and to verify its quality. Strictly speaking, when a cooperator goes to a village and opens cooperative store, the people take no part in this whenever; but at the same time guided by their own interests they will hasten to try to take part in it.
There is another aspect this question. From the point of view of the “enlightened” European there is not much left for us to do to induce absolutely everyone to take not a passive, but inactive part in cooperative operations. Strictly speaking, there is “only” one thing we have left to do and that is to make our people so “enlightened” that they understand all the advantages of everybody participating in the work of the cooperatives, and organizes participation. “only” the fact. There are now no other devices needed to advance to socialism. But to achieve this “only”, there must be a veritable revolution-the entire people must go through a period of cultural development. Therefore, our rule must be: as little philosophizing and as few acrobatics as possible. In this respect NEP is an advance, because it is adjustable to the level of the most ordinary peasant and does not demand anything higher of him. But it will take a whole historical epoch to get the entire population into the work of the cooperatives through NEP. At best we can achieve this in one or two decades. Nevertheless, it will be a distinct historical epoch, and without this historical epoch, without universal literacy, without a proper degree of efficiency, without training the population sufficiently to acquire the habit of book reading, and without the material basis for this, without a certain sufficiency to safeguard against, say, bad harvests, famine, etc.-without this we shall not achieve our object. The thing now is to learn to combine the wide revolutionary range of action, the revolutionary enthusiasm which we have displayed, and displayed abundantly, and crowned with complete success-to learn to combine this with (I’m almost inclined to say) the ability to be an efficient and capable trader, which is quite enough to be a good cooperator. By ability to be a trader I mean the ability to be a cultured trader. Let those Russians, or peasants, who imagine that since they trade they are good traders, get that well into their heads. This does not follow that all. They do trade, but that is far from being cultured traders. They now trade in an Asiatic manner, but to be a good trader one must trade in the European manner. They are a whole epoch behind in that.
In conclusion: a number of economic, financial and banking privileges must be granted to the cooperatives-this is the way our socialist state must promote the new principle on which the population must be organized. But this is only the general outline of the task; it does not define and depict in detail the entire content of the practical task, i.e., we must find what form of “bonus” to give for joining the cooperatives (and the terms on which we should give it), the form of bonus by which we shall assist the cooperative sufficiently, the form of bonus that will produce the civilized cooperator. And given social ownership of the means of production, given the class victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, the system of civilized cooperators is the system of socialism.
–January 4, 1923
II
Whenever I wrote about the New Economic Policy I always quoted the article on state capitalism which I wrote in 1918 [“Left-Wing” Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality; part III]. This has more than once aroused doubts in the minds of certain young comrades but their doubts were mainly on abstract political points.
It seemed to them that the term “state capitalism” could not be applied to a system under which the means of production were owned by the working-class, a working-class that held political power. They did not notice, however, that I use the term “state capitalism”, firstly, to connect historically our present position with the position adopted in my controversy with the so-called Left Communists; also, I argued at the time that state capitalism would be superior to our existing economy. It was important for me to show the continuity between ordinary state capitalism and the unusual, even very unusual, state capitalism to which I referred in introducing the reader to the New Economic Policy. Secondly, the practical purpose was always important to me. And the practical purpose of our New Economic Policy was to lease out concessions. In the prevailing circumstances, concessions in our country would unquestionably have been a pure type of state capitalism. That is how I argued about state capitalism.
But there is another aspect of the matter for which we may need state capitalism, or at least a comparison with it. It is a question of cooperatives.
In the capitalist state, cooperatives are no doubt collective capitalist institutions. Nor is there any doubt that under our present economic conditions, when we combine private capitalist enterprises-but in no other way than nationalized land and in no other way than under the control of the working-class state-with enterprises of the consistently socialist type (the means of production, the land on which the enterprises are situated, and the enterprises as a whole belonging to the state), the question arises about a third type of enterprise, the cooperatives, which were not formally regarded as an independent type differing fundamentally from the others. Under private capitalism, cooperative enterprises differ from capitalist enterprises as collective enterprises differ from private enterprises. Under state capitalism, cooperative enterprises differ from state capitalist enterprises, firstly, because they are private enterprises, and, secondly, because they are collective enterprises. Under our present system, cooperative enterprises differ from private capitalist enterprises because they are collective enterprises, but do not differ from socialist enterprises if the land on which they are situated and means of production belong to the state, i.e., the working-class.
This circumstance is not considered sufficiently when cooperatives are discussed. It is forgotten that owing to the special features of our political system, our cooperatives acquire an altogether exceptional significance. If we exclude concessions, which, incidentally, have not developed on any considerable scale, cooperation under our conditions nearly always coincides fully with socialism.
Let me explain what I mean. Why were the plans of the old cooperators, from Robert Owen onwards, fantastic? Because they dreamed of peacefully remodeling contemporary society into socialism without taking account of such fundamental questions as the class struggle, the capture of political power by the working-class, the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting class. That is why we are right in regarding as entirely fantastic this “cooperative” socialism, and as romantic, and even banal, the dream of transforming class enemies into class collaborators and class war into class peace (so-called class truce) by merely organizing the population in cooperative societies.
Undoubtedly we were right from the point of view of the fundamental task of the present day, for socialism cannot be established without a class struggle for the political power and a state.
But see how things have changed now that the political power is in the hands of the working-class, now that the political power of the exploiters is overthrown and all the means of production (except those which the workers’ state voluntarily abandons on specified terms and for a certain time to the exploiters in the form of concessions) are owned by the working-class.
Now we are entitled to say that for us the mere growth of cooperation (with the “slight” exception mentioned above) is identical with the growth of socialism, and at the same time we have to admit that there has been a radical modification in our whole outlook on socialism. The radical modification is this; formerly we placed, and had to place, the main emphasis on the political struggle, on revolution, on winning political power, etc. Now the emphasis is changing and shifting to peaceful, organizational, “cultural” work. I should say that emphasis is shifting to educational work, were it not for our international relations, were it not for the fact that we have to fight for our position on a worldscale. If we leave that aside, however, and confine ourselves to internal economic relations, the emphasis in our work is certainly shifting to education.
Two main tasks confront us, which constitute the epoch-to reorganize our machinery of state, which is utterly useless, in which we took over in its entirety from the preceding epoch; during the past five years of struggle we did not, and could not, drastically reorganize it. Our second task is educational work among the peasants. And the economic object of this educational work among the peasants is to organize the latter in cooperative societies. If the whole of the peasantry had been organized in cooperatives, we would by now have been standing with both feet on the soil of socialism. But the organization of the entire peasantry in cooperative societies presupposes a standard of culture, and the peasants (precisely among the peasants as the overwhelming mass) that cannot, in fact, be achieved without a cultural revolution.
Our opponents told us repeatedly that we were rash in undertaking to implant socialism in an insufficiently cultured country. But they were misled by our having started from the opposite end to that prescribed by theory (the theory of pedants of all kinds), because in our country the political and social revolution preceded the cultural revolution, that very cultural revolution which nevertheless now confronts us.
This cultural revolution would now suffice to make our country a completely socialist country; but it presents immense difficulties of a purely cultural (for we are illiterate) and material character (for to be cultured we must achieve a certain development of the material means of production, we must have a certain material base).
–January 6, 1923
Source:
Lenin’s Collected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, (p. 467-75). Transcription/Mark-up: Brian Baggins.
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive (2000). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
