[Marxism] [ Marxism] Inflation Delivers a Blow to Vietnamâ?Ts Spirits

[Louis Proyect]

Shane Mage wrote:
> NEP was a "retreat" only from the siege economy called "war communism"  
> and from the illusions grasped at by many Bolsheviks (Bukharin and  
> Preobrazhensky foremost among them) that this siege economy  
> represented the beginning of a communist society.  

It is more accurate to say that both War Communism and the NEP were 
*forced* on the infant USSR. The first policy was dictated by the need 
to enforce a draconian production system during a civil war. The second 
policy was dictated by the need to recover after the immense human and 
infrastructure losses from that war. Unfortunately, building socialism 
on a 'normal' basis has been next to impossible in beleaguered 
underdeveloped countries but that doesn't mean that we should accept 
either War Communism or the NEP as anything but a Hobson's Choice.