Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR
1951 work by Joseph Stalin
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Through Joseph Stalin, Soviet Union and Karl Marx
Content
The main topics discussed are the following:
- Character of Economic Laws Under Socialism
- Commodity Production Under Socialism
- The Law of Value Under Socialism
- Abolition of the Antithesis Between Town and Country, and Between Mental and Physical Labour, and Elimination of Distinctions Between Them
- Disintegration of the Single World Market and Deepening of the Crisis of the World Capitalist System
- Inevitability of Wars Between Capitalist Countries
- The Basic Economic Laws of Modern Capitalism and of Socialism
Regarding the law of value and commodity production, Stalin wrote, "[I]t is chiefly the form, the outward appearance of the old categories of capitalism that have remained in our country, but that their essence has radically changed in adaptation to the requirements of the development of the socialist economy."
Stalin stated that wars between capitalist nations were still inevitable, a position that Eugene Varga had disputed.
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Interpretations in China
Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR was immediately translated upon its release and became a foundational political economy text in the People's Republic of China in 1952. It was influential in discussions of public and collective ownership and the law of value under socialism.
During the first Zhengzhou Conference (November 2, 1958 to November 10, 1958), Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, wrote a letter on November 9 suggesting that leading cadres at all levels carefully read Stalin's work.
The book was later criticised by Mao Zedong in A Critique of Soviet Economics.
Early market socialist economists in both the Soviet Union and China would use these words of Stalin to justify market reforms. In his 1981 work China's Socialist Economy, Xue Muqiao would use Stalin's book as a justification for using the market mechanism in the primary stage of socialism. Xue also introduced the term "underdeveloped socialism" in his book China's Socialist Economy. The book was written in the orthodox Marxist–Leninist framework enunciated by Stalin in Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR. Xue wrote that within the socialist mode of production there were several phases and for China to reach an advanced form of socialism it had to focus on developing the productive forces. He proposed a theory in which the basic laws of economic growth were those in which "the relations of production must conform to the level of the productive forces". Similar to Stalin, Xue considered the productive forces to be primary and that the relations of production had to conform to the level of the productive forces. Xue believed that this was a fundamental universal law of economics.