Iosif Stalin, Report on the Work of the Central Committee to the Seventeenth Congress of the CPSU(b). January 26, 1934
Original Source: Pravda, 28 January 1934.
… Naturally, a classless society cannot come of its own accord, as it were. It has to be achieved and built by the efforts of all the working people, by strengthening the organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat, by intensifying the class struggle, by abolishing classes, by eliminating the remnants of the capitalist classes, and in battles with enemies, both internal and external.
The point is clear, one would think.
And yet, who does not know that the enunciation of this clear and elementary thesis of Leninism has given rise to not a little confusion in the minds of a section of Party members and to unhealthy sentiments among them? The thesis that we are advancing towards a classless society — put forward as a slogan — was interpreted by them to mean a spontaneous process. And they began to reason in this way: If it is a classless society, then we can relax the class struggle, we can relax the dictatorship of the proletariat, and get rid of the state altogether, since it is fated to wither away soon in any case. And they fell into a state of foolish rapture, in the expectation that soon there would be no classes, and therefore no class struggle, and therefore no cares and worries, and therefore it is possible to lay down one’s arms and go to bed — to sleep in expectation of the advent of a classless society. (General laughter.) …
Naturally, if this confusion of views and these non-Bolshevik sentiments obtained a hold over the majority of our Party, the Party would find itself demobilized and disarmed.
Let us take, further, the question of the agricultural artel and the agricultural commune. Everybody admits now that under present conditions the artel is the only correct form of the collective-farm movement. And that is quite understandable: a) the artel correctly combines the personal, everyday interests of the collective farmers with their public interests; b) the artel successfully adapts personal, everyday interests to public interests, and thereby helps to educate the individual peasants of yesterday in the spirit of collectivism.
Unlike the artel, where only the means of production are socialized, the communes, until recently, socialized not only the means of production, but also everyday life of every member of the commune; that is to say, the members of a commune, unlike the members of an artel, did not individually own poultry, small livestock, a cow, grain, or household land. This means that in the commune the personal, everyday interests of the members have not so much been taken into account and combined with the public interests as they have been eclipsed by the latter in the interests of petty-bourgeois equalization. …
There are those who think that by declaring the artel to be the fundamental form of the collective-farm movement the Party has drifted away from socialism, has retreated from the commune, from the higher form of the collective-farm movement, to a lower form. Why, one may ask? Because, it is suggested, there is no equality in the artel, since differences in the requirements and in the personal, everyday life of the members of the artel are preserved; whereas in the commune there is equality, because the requirements and the personal, everyday life of its members have been made equal. But, firstly, we no longer have any communes in which there is levelling, equalization of requirements and personal, everyday life. Practice has shown that the communes would certainly have been doomed had they not abandoned equalization and had they not in fact gone over to the position of artels. Consequently, there is no point in referring to what no longer exists. Secondly, every Leninist knows, if he is a real Leninist, that equalization in the sphere of requirements and personal, everyday life is a reactionary petty-bourgeois absurdity worthy of some primitive sect of ascetics, but not of a socialist society organized on Marxist lines; for we cannot expect all people to have the same requirements and tastes, and all people to mould their personal, everyday life on the same model. And, finally, are not differences in requirements and in personal, everyday life still preserved among the workers? Does that mean that workers are more remote from socialism than members of agricultural communes?
These people evidently think that socialism calls for equalization, for levelling the requirements and personal, everyday life of the members of society. Needless to say, such an assumption has nothing in common with Marxism, with Leninism. By equality Marxism means, not equalization of personal requirements and everyday life, but the abolition of classes, i.e., a) the equal emancipation of all working people from exploitation after the capitalists have been overthrown and expropriated; b) the equal abolition for all of private property in the means of production after they have been converted into the property of the whole of society; c) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to receive in return for this according to the work performed (socialist society); d) the equal duty of all to work according to their ability, and the equal right of all working people to receive in return for this according to their needs (communist society). Moreover, Marxism proceeds from the assumption that people’s tastes and requirements are not, and cannot be, identical and equal in regard to quality or quantity, whether in the period of socialism or in the period of communism.
There you have the Marxist conception of equality. …
Victory never comes of itself — it is usually won by effort. Good resolutions and declarations in favour of the general line of the Party are only a beginning; they merely express the desire for victory, but not the victory itself. After the correct line has been laid down, after a correct solution of the problem has been found, success depends on how the work is organized; on the organization of the struggle for carrying out the Party line; on the proper selection of personnel; on checking upon the fulfilment of the decisions of the leading bodies. Other wise the correct line of the Party and the correct solutions are in danger of being seriously prejudiced. More than that, after the correct political line has been laid down, organizational work decides everything, including the fate of the political line itself, its success or failure.
As a matter of fact, victory was achieved and won by a systematic and fierce struggle against all sorts of difficulties in the way of carrying out the Party line; by overcoming these difficulties; by mobilizing the Party and the working class for the task of overcoming the difficulties; by organizing the struggle to overcome the difficulties; by removing inefficient executives and choosing better ones, capable of waging the struggle against difficulties.
What are these difficulties; and where do they lie?
They are difficulties of our organizational work, difficulties of our organizational leadership. They lie in ourselves, in our leading people, in our organizations, in the apparatus of our Party, Soviet, economic, trade-union, Young Communist League and all other organizations.
We must realize that the strength and prestige of our Party and Soviet, economic and all other organizations, and of their leaders, have grown to an unprecedented degree. And precisely because their strength and prestige have grown to an unprecedented degree, it is their work that now determines everything, or nearly everything. There can be no justification for references to so-called objective conditions. Now that the correctness of the Party’s political line has been confirmed by the experience of a number of years, and that there is no longer any doubt as to the readiness of the workers and peasants to support this line, the part played by so-called objective conditions has been reduced to a minimum; whereas the part played by our organizations and their leaders has become decisive, exceptional. What does this mean? It means that from now on nine-tenths of the responsibility for the failures and defects in our work rest, not on “objective” conditions, but on ourselves, and on ourselves alone. …
Bureaucracy and red tape in the administrative apparatus; idle chatter about “leadership in general” instead of real and concrete leadership; the functional structure of our organizations and lack of individual responsibility; lack of personal responsibility in work, and wage equalization; the absence of a systematic check on the fulfilment of decisions; fear of self-criticism — these are the sources of our difficulties; this is where our difficulties now lie. …
Source: excerpted from From J. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), pp. 671-765.