Evgenii Preobrazhenskii, The New Economics. 1926

It will be no exaggeration to say that for all our theoreticians, and practitioners as well, the most interesting, vital, exciting question since the October coup of 1917 and the military victory of the revolution is the question of what the Soviet system represents, in what direction it is developing, what the basic laws of this development are, and, finally, what relation this first experience of an economy whose main links go outside the limits of capitalism has to our old and habitual images of socialism. The last question could be correctly phrased thus: How after eight years of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a vast country, should we view our former images of socialism? ...

... The complex of state socialist production can appear only as the result of breaking up the old system on all fronts, only as the result of social revolution. This fact has colossal significance for understanding not only the genesis of socialism but also the socialist construction that follows. On the other hand, insufficient understanding or neglect of the essence of what socialism is has more than once led and is leading a series of comrades to purely Philistine and sometimes outright reformist notions about the Soviet economy and the paths of its development...

Primary socialist accumulation, as the period of creating the material prerequisites for socialist production in the proper sense of the word, can only begin with the seizure of power and nationalization...

... On a private or limited scale socialist accumulation is not able to resolve the basic problem of the socialist organization of the economy. In particular, insofar as we are concerned with the economy of the Soviet Union, it is essential to have: 1) accumulation which makes it possible for the state economy to achieve the technical level of contemporary capitalism wherever it is not possible to move gradually on to the base of the new technology; 2) accumulation which makes possible the change in the technological base of the state economy, the scientific organization of labor, the planned direction of the whole complex of the state economy, everything that is not possible without large supplies for insurance and planned reserves; 3) accumulation which guarantees progress for the whole complex, not Just its individual parts, since the chain of dependence in the movement of the whole complex makes progress on different levels, in the manner of capitalist "partisan warfare," individual initiative, and competition, completely impossible...

We term socialist accumulation the assimilation to the functioning means of production of the surplus product which is created within the amalgamated socialist economy and which is not distributed as a supplement among the agents of socialist production and the socialist state, but contributes to expanded reproduction. On the other hand, we term primary socialist accumulation the accumulation in the hands of the state of most or all of the material resources from sources lying outside the complex of the state economy. In a backward peasant country this accumulation must play a colossally important role, to a vast degree hastening the arrival of the moment when the technological and scientific reconstruction of the state economy can begin and when this economy can finally achieve purely economic predominance over capitalism... The basic law of our Soviet economy, which at the present moment is coursing through this stage, is precisely the law of primary or preliminary socialist accumulation. To this law are subordinated all the basic processes of economic life in the sphere of the state economy. This law, on the other hand, changes and partly liquidates the law of value and all the laws of the commodity and commodity-capitalistic economy insofar as they manifest themselves or can manifest themselves in our system of economy. Consequently, we cannot only speak of primary socialist accumulation, we cannot even understand the essence of the Soviet economy unless we understand the central role which the law of primary socialist accumulation plays in this economy, bow it determines, in the struggle with the law of value, the distribution of the means of production in the economy, the distribution of the working force, and the extent of alienation of the country's surplus production for the expansion of socialist reproduction...

In regard to alienation of part of the surplus product for the benefit of socialism, matters are entirely different from all pre-socialist economic forms. Exactions from the non-socialist forms must not only have a place inevitably in the period of primary socialist accumulation-they must inevitably assume a vast, directly decisive role in peasant countries like the Soviet Union...

In the period of primary socialist accumulation the state economy cannot do without alienating part of the surplus product of the village and of craft production, in sum, without deductions from capitalistic accumulation for the benefit of socialist accumulation. We do not know to what "extent other countries will emerge devastated from the civil war in which the dictatorship of the proletariat triumphs. But a country like the USSR, with its devastated and in general rather backward economy, must go through the period of primary accumulation with very broad use of the sources of the pre-socialist forms of the economy. We should not forget that the period of primary socialist accumulation is the most critical period in the life of the socialist state after the termination of the civil war. In this period the socialist system is not yet in a condition to develop organically all its own advantages, while at the same time it inevitably liquidates a series of economic advantages which are characteristic of the developed capitalist system. To traverse this period rapidly, to reach quickly the moment when the socialist system will have developed all its natural advantages over capitalism - this is a question of life or death for the socialist state. At least this is how the question stands right now for the USSR, and perhaps it will stand thus for some time in a series of European countries where the proletariat is victorious. Under such conditions to rely only on accumulation within the socialist sphere means to risk the very existence of socialist economics, or to extend indefinitely the period of preliminary accumulation...

... At the moment of its victory the working class changes from the object of exploitation into the subject of it. It cannot regard its own working power, health, labor and conditions as the capitalists regard them. This constitutes the definition of the limit to the tempo of socialist accumulation, a limit which capitalistic industry in the first period of its development did not know...

... In this period the law of wages is subordinated to the law of socialist accumulation, which finds its expression in conscious self-restraint by the working class... Socialist accumulation is a necessity for the working class, but now it proceeds as a consciously understood necessity ....

Source: Robert V. Daniels, ed., A Documentary History of Communism (Hanover: Published for the University of Vermont by University Press of New England, 1984), pp. 176-178.