Lets start with the first quoted tekst Lenin, Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Collected Works, Progress Publishers,
« In 1921 Lenin made a self-criticism concerning the period of the three previous years. He wrote: “We expected… to be able to organise the state production and the state distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country directly as ordered by the proletarian state. Experience has proved that we were wrong. ” [1]
I will prove that only by the choice of (the) quote(s) you can make Lenin say contradictionary things.
Lenin:
We have consummated the bourgeois-democratic revolution as nobody had done before. We are advancing towards the socialist revolution consciously, firmly and unswervingly, knowing that it is not separated from the bourgeois-democratic revolution by a Chinese Wall, and knowing too that (in the last analysis) struggle alone will determine how far we shall advance, what part of this immense and lofty task we shall accomplish, and to what extent we shall succeed in consolidating our victories. Time will show. But we see even now that a tremendous amount—tremendous for this ruined, exhausted and backward country—has already been done towards the socialist transformation of society.[2] (…)
Our proletarian revolution was not afflicted with this accursed “respect” for this thrice-accursed medievalism and for the “sacred right of private property”.
But in order to consolidate the achievements of the bourgeois-democratic revolution for the peoples of Russia, we were obliged to go farther; and we did go farther. We solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, as a “by-product” of our main and genuinely proletarian -revolutionary, socialist activities. We have always said that reforms are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle. We said—and proved it by deeds—that bourgeois-democratic reforms are a by-product of the proletarian, i.e., of the socialist revolution. Incidentally, … heroes of “Two and-a-Half” Marxism were incapable of understanding this relation between the bourgeois-democratic and the proletarian-socialist revolutions. The first develops into the second. The second, in passing, solves the problems of the first. The second consolidates the work of the first. Struggle, and struggle alone, decides how far the second succeeds in outgrowing the first.
The Soviet system is one of the most vivid proofs, or manifestations, of how the one revolution develops into the other. The Soviet system provides the maximum of democracy for the workers and peasants; at the same time, it marks a break with bourgeois democracy and the rise of a new, epoch-making type of democracy, namely, proletarian democracy, or the dictatorship of the proletariat.[3] (…)
The question of imperialist wars, of the international policy of finance capital which now dominates the whole world, a policy that must inevitably engender new imperialist wars, that must inevitably cause an extreme intensification of national oppression, pillage, brigandry and the strangulation of weak, backward and small nationalities by a handful of “advanced” powers—that question has been the keystone of all policy in all the countries of the globe since 1914.[4] (….)
Our last, but most important and most difficult task, the one we have done least about, is economic development, the laying of economic foundations for the new, socialist edifice on the site of the demolished feudal edifice and the semi-demolished capitalist edifice. It is in this most important and most difficult task that we have sustained the greatest number of reverses and have made most mistakes. How could anyone expect that a task so new to the world could be begun without reverses and without mistakes! But we have begun it. We shall continue it. At this very moment we are, by our New Economic Policy, correcting a number of our mistakes. We are learning how to continue erecting the socialist edifice in a small-peasant country without committing such mistakes.[5] (…)
We expected—or perhaps it would be truer to say that we presumed without having given it adequate consideration—to be able to organise the state production and the state distribution of products on communist lines in a small-peasant country directly as ordered by the proletarian state. Experience has proved that we were wrong. It appears that a number of transitional stages were necessary—state capitalism and socialism—in order to prepare—to prepare by many years of effort—for the transition to communism.[6] (….)
The proletarian state must become a cautious, assiduous and shrewd “businessman”, a punctilious wholesale merchant—otherwise it will never succeed in putting this small-peasant country economically on its feet. Under existing conditions, living as we are side by side with the capitalist (for the time being capitalist) West, there is no other way of progressing to communism. A wholesale merchant seems to be an economic type as remote from communism as heaven from earth. But that is one of the contradictions which, in actual life, lead from a small-peasant economy via state capitalism to socialism. Personal incentive will step up production; we must increase production first and foremost and at all costs. Wholesale trade economically unites millions of small peasants: it gives them a personal incentive, links them up and leads them to the next step, namely, to various forms of association and alliance in the process of production itself.[7]
It was a question of several months, and then go farther with the SOCIALIST revolution with (by the dictature of the proletariaat or « the socialist state ») as far as possible, SOCIALIST relations of production.
In the by Peter Franssen chosen quote (in italic-fat) it simply is said that after the revolution COMMUNISM cannot be installed ( as all kinds of petty-bourgeois element suggest). Like Lenin and Marx wrote several times between the socialist revolution and the stade of communism, there is the transition of « the FIRST stade of communism »also called the stade of SOCIALISM (wereby the state can be nothing other than « the dictature of the proletariat ».
By reason of CONCRETE HISTORICAL situations: the menace of a new imperialist war, the fysical but also idelogical weakening of the mass of the workers, there will be the implementation of a concrete economic policy, the
The NEP is a carefull and step by step tempory retreat ( in no way to give up the dictature of the proletariaat). The NEP has to make possible to enforce the dictature of the proletariaat, to lay the base of a socialist planeconomy under controle of the « socialist state ».
One of the way is that under the NEP there will be a stimulation of developing new « Alliances » and « associations » (so new form of organisations) of the workers (peasants and industryworkers)
For Peter Franssen ( and implemented by Deng Xiaoping) the « NEP » in
[1] Lenin, Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, p.58
[2] V. I. Lenin "Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution ", Written:
[3] Idem.
[4] Idem.
[5] Idem.
[6] Idem.
[7] Idem.
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