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Tony Cliff

The Nature of Stalinist Russia

Chapter 9:
The imperialist expansion of Russia

Empires existed before the monopolist stage of capitalism, and even before capitalism itself. The Persian empire rose at an almost unparalleled tempo between 555 and 525 B.C., and comprised an area eight times larger than that of Germany; subsequently the Greek Empire rose, then the Roman Empire. The decline of feudalism and the rise of commercial capital saw the rise of the big Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch Empires. With the advent of the industrial revolution, England in two generations – from the beginning of the Seven Years War (1756) to the end of the Napoleonic wars (1814) – built its empire by conquering Canada, the decisive section of India, South Africa and Australia.

The imperialism of every period, however, is different in its motives and results, and the use of the one word, imperialism, to describe the different phenomena is therefore liable to bring about more confusion than clarity. Lenin used the term for the highest stage of capitalism, when it is in decline, and when the proletarian revolution is on the order of the day. But the empires of even this one period have very different characters. Zinoviev says in his article What is Imperialism?:

In doing this [defining what modern imperialism actually is] we must not forget that there are various types of imperialism. British imperialism differs from German imperialism, etc. There is a European imperialism, an Asiatic imperialism and an American imperialism; there is a white imperialism and a yellow imperialism. Japanese imperialism doesn’t resemble the French type; Russian imperialism is of quite a unique type, because it is a backward (it is not even possible any longer to say an Asiatic) imperialism, developing on the basis of an extraordinary backwardness. [1]

If, as Lenin explains, the typical feature of imperialism is the search for fields for capital export, while for youthful capitalism the typical feature was the search for markets, it seems wrong to have called Tsarist Russia imperialist. But all the Marxists including Lenin and Trotsky, did call it imperialist. And they were correct. For in the context of world economy, and the relations prevailing between Tsarist Russia and the highly developed countries, which is the criterion for its definition, Tsarist Russia was imperialist in the Leninist sense.

Lenin’s definition of imperialism gives:

... the following five essential features:

1. The concentration of production and capital developed to such a stage that it creates monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.

2. The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy.

3. The export of capital, which has become extremely important, and distinguished from the export of commodities.

4. The formation of international capitalist monopolies which share the world among themselves.

5. The territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers is completed. [2]

of the first feature state capitalism is certainly a species, as it consists of one general state monopoly. As regards the second feature, the merging of bank and industrial capital reaches the highest stage when the state is the industrial and banking capitalist together. As regards the fourth feature, the increasing competition between the imperialist powers drives the state – especially emphasised in Germany and Japan – to cut across international capitalist monopolies. It is clear that the economic invasion of an international capitalist monopoly is nearly excluded in a state capitalist economy. (Some foreign concessions, of course, are not excluded.) The third and fifth features – the relation of Russian state capitalism to the export of capital, and to the territorial division of the world – need further elaboration.

Chapter 8 Index

1. The example of Japanese imperialism

Of all the countries in the world except Stalinist Russia, that which reached the highest centralisation of capital was Japan. It was estimated that the ‘Big Four’ zaibatsu (family monopoly organisations) controlled 60 per cent of the capital invested in all Japanese joint stock companies (the parallel figure for 1929 was 45 per cent.) [3] At the same time as the centralisation of capital in Japan is much higher than in any other capitalist country, excluding Stalinist Russia, the productive forces of Japan lag far behind these of the countries of the West. This combination of highly centralised capital and the great backwardness of the country as a whole explains the specific character of Japanese imperialism, which distinguishes it from other imperialisms, and makes it very similar in many respects to Stalinist imperialism. An outline of the specific features of Japanese imperialism will therefore help us to clarify some of the aspects of Stalinist imperialism.

The industrial output of Japan increased very rapidly during the present century. In the years 1913 to 1928, the tempo of this advance was about three times that of Britain in the years 1860 to 1913, that is, every year they produced on an average 6 per cent more than the year before. Between 1927 and 1936 the industrial output of Japan increased by approximately 100 per cent, and E.B. Schumpeter could justifiably write:

It is no longer possible to state, as one careful and well informed writer did in 1930, that Japan can never become a manufacturing nation of major importance because of the lack of fuel and iron, which are essential in peace as well as war. Japan has become a major manufacturing nation. The rise of the heavy industries has been the striking development of recent years. Before the depression it was the textile industries, food preparation, pottery, and paper manufacturing which predominated. In 1935 just under half, in 1937 about 55 per cent, and in 1938 about 61 per cent of the total value of industrial production was accounted for by metals, chemicals, machinery, and engineering products. This meant that Japan produced her own ships and many of her own airplanes, but imported automobiles and parts; she was no longer dependent on the outside world for a large part of her steel, fertiliser, arms, ammunition and machinery, although she still had to import a substantial part of the raw materials from which they were manufactured. Since 1937, Japan has made a great effort to develop the raw material resources of the Yen Bloc and of adjacent regions in the Pacific area. [4]

From 1920 to 1936 the output of pig-iron increased four times, that of steel eight times, and the kilowatt capacity of electric power stations five and a half times. The main increase in industrial output took place in the means of production. Thus the value of the output of the chemical, metal and machine industries rose from about 2,000 million yen in 1926 to more than 9,000 million in 1937, i.e. four and a half times. The output of all the other industries increased only from about 5,150 million yen to 7,420 million, i.e. an increase of 44 per cent. In the same years prices rose by 40 per cent, so that we may conclude that the output of means of production rose about three times, while the output of means of consumption remained unchanged. That the increase in the output of heavy industry cannot be explained only, or even mainly, as a result of armament production will be clear from the following fact:

Between 1933 and 1936, the value of metals, chemicals, machinery and tools produced in establishments employing five or more people increased from 3 to 6 billion yen whereas the total expenditure on the army and navy, only a fraction of which was spent on armaments, rose from 0.5 billion yen in 1931-32 to 1.1 billion yen in 1936-37. [5]

Between 1931-32 and 1936-37 “the total annual expenditure of the army and navy increased by 600 million yen ... while the annual national income increased by 7,000 million yen or nearly 12 times as much”. [6]

In this situation of the rapid rise of industrial output in Japan, which was the result of its general backwardness on the one hand and the high concentration of capital on the other, “superfluous” capital did not appear and the rate of profit remained high. Extremely low wages were another important factor allowing this high rate of profit: “Average corporate earnings in 1936 and 1937 were from 16 to 20 per cent of paid-up capital and dividends averaged 8 to 9 per cent.” [7]

In the light of this, it would be wrong to say that Japanese imperialism sought fields of capital investment because it was faced with a “superfluity” of capital and a low rate of profit in Japan herself. That the rate of profit was high and that it did not suffer from an abundance of capital but from a lack of it is, however, but the other side of the coin of its backwardness. This causes a very interesting dialectical development: the backwardness of Japan drove her to export on an extremely large scale, and to conquer a tremendous empire. In the words of F. Sternberg:

When Great Britain and France founded their empires they were both leading industrial countries. Their empires were never intended to strengthen their own industrial position. Japan was in a very different situation. Her aim was to achieve a rate of development which would reduce the industrial gap between her and the other capitalist countries, and to become at least as strong and if possible still stronger than they were. [8]

After the First World War the foreign investments of the highly developed countries which suffered from an enormous “superfluity” of capital, except the US, did not increase, but on the contrary decreased. Even with the US the foreign investments of these countries did not rise beyond the level of 1914, as the following table shows [9]:

Thus, while in the years 1860-1914 the quantity of capital invested abroad by the advanced capitalist countries grew almost uninterruptedly, from 1914, when imperialism had reached maturity, the quantity of capital invested abroad never rose above the level of 1914, and even declined below it.

As against this, Japan undertook an immense export of capital, especially to Manchuria, her only important colony it had until the Sino-Japanese war [10]:

The Manchurian Five-Year Plan (1937-41) planned an investment of 2,800 million yen, which was subsequently raised to 4,800 million yen in the revised plan, and then, in September 1938, to 6,000 million yen. This figure was impossible of achievement owing to the lack of equipment in Japan, and the scarcity of general and skilled labour in particular. Investments reached only about 3,000 million yen in the period laid down by the plan. But even this expressed a very big rise in production, as the following table shows [11]:

The steel industry, established in 1935, was after a few years producing more than a million tons per annum. Machinery factories were established, which supplied the major part of the equipment of Manchurian industry. In 1939 a car industry was established which planned to employ 100,000 workers. A large aeroplane factory was also established. The construction of ships up to 5,000 tons was begun. The railway network of Manchuria increased from 5,570 kilometres in 1932 and to 15,000 kilometres in 1943 – more than the whole railway system of China proper.

in the light of this development it is clear why one writer could say, “Manchuria ... was to be developed as an extension of the homeland.” [12]

Sternberg remarked:

The given historical conditions in which Japanese imperialism developed caused it to encourage and force the development of industrialisation in its empire, whilst different historical conditions caused the European imperialists to prevent or retard industrial development in their empires. [13]

In the ten years between Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and her entry into the Second World War (1931-41) she so accelerated the industrialisation of Manchuria that although Manchuria’s population is only about 110 per cent of British India’s, as much, if not more, industry was created there in one decade, as was created in India in a century of imperialist rule. [14]

The industrialisation of Manchuria was not left to the blind, unorganised activity of the different Japanese companies, but was carried out by mixed companies of the monopolies and the state according to a plan. Such organisation was necessary for rapid industrialisation.

Chapter 8 Index

The motives for the expansion of the Stalinist bureaucracy

Just as the privileges of the bourgeoisie are conditioned by the unceasing advance of accumulation, so are the privileges of the Russian bureaucracy conditioned. But, unlike the bourgeoisie of the West, Russian state capitalism in its Tugan-Hayek stage suffers neither from a “superfluity” of capital, from a restriction of the possibilities of accumulation which the antagonistic mode of distribution causes in traditional capitalist countries, nor from a rise of wages which would threaten the rate of profit. In these respects Russian state capitalism is more similar to Japanese imperialism before its defeat in the Second World War than to the Western imperialist countries. There is, however, one important difference seeing that nearly all the means of production in Russia belong to the state, the industrial development of its colonial regions, i.e. the areas of the nations oppressed by the Russian bureaucracy, is directly a part of the general industrial development of Russia itself. The Japanese state saw in Manchuria “an extension of the homeland”. The Stalinist state looks upon the Ukraine, the Caucasus, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. in the same way, and, because of its monopolistic economic position, its development of these regions is and will be more efficient than that of Japanese imperialism in Manchuria. Just as Japanese imperialism looked upon the a-development of Manchuria as a necessary step to bridge the distance between it and the advanced powers of the West, so the Stalinist bureaucracy is driven to an imperialist policy for the same reason.

The same relative backwardness drives Russia towards the establishment of industries in the countries of the oppressed nations, but, as the second side of the same coin, to loot capital wherever Russia can lay hold of it. Japanese imperialism carried out large-scale plunder in China. As regards Germany: “In the conquered territories, German firms have taken over the assets of resident concerns by right of conquest, not through ‘business as usual’.” [15]

Stalinist Russia looted all the countries of Eastern Europe and Manchuria. It did so not only by transferring factories to Russia, but also, as Nazi Germany did, by concluding barter agreements with its own vassals which were ruinous to them. The concentrated monopoly capitalism of Japan and Germany and the state capitalism of Russia thus reveal another feature characteristic of the period of the primitive accumulation of capital – that trade and plunder were indistinguishable. If Alfred Marshall could say of that time that “silver and sugar seldom came to Europe without a stain of blood”, today the looted property is much bloodier; and it is not silver or sugar that is plundered, but means of production.

An additional motive for the imperialist expansion of Russia is the lack of certain raw materials. Middle East oil, for example – that of Northern Iran in particular – plays a big role in the plans of the Stalinist bureaucracy. This is the result primarily of the tardiness in the execution of the oil extraction plans in Russia. Thus, for instance, the Second Five-Year Plan set the increase in production from 23.3 million tons in 1932 to 47.5 million tons in 1937. In fact, it increased only to 30.5 million tons. In 1940 production did not reach more than 35 million tons, although the plan laid down a level of more than 50 million tons. With these miscalculations, the Fourth Five-Year Plan set a more moderate aim for 1950 – 35.4 million tons. On examining the general plan for increase of production, it is clear that oil will be one of the most important bottlenecks in Russia. The Stalinist bureaucracy tried to overcome this bottleneck by taking over Romania and northern Iran (it did not succeed in the latter).

Another factor motivating the expansion of Russia is the need for new labour power. In highly developed countries the export of capital is a reaction to the rise of wages which cuts into the rate of profit; it is directed to areas where labour power is cheap, and thus increases the amount of labour exploited by the same quantity of capital. The same result was achieved in a different way when Nazi Germany brought millions of workers from the conquered countries, particularly of the East, into Germany. A cheaper labour power than that of the Russian worker, especially of the slave labourer, is not to be found in Europe, so that the annexation of new areas to Russia cannot be motivated by the need to find cheaper labour power. But this does not mean that it is not motivated by the necessity to find an additional quantity of labour power. Even though the quantity of capital relative to the population in Russia is very small, it still suffers from a lack of labour power. This is to be explained by its wasteful use caused by the lack of capital, so that side by side with the lack of capital appears the lack of labour power: hence slave labour and the low productivity of labour in agriculture. Every factor that impedes the productivity of labour – the bureaucracy itself included – will increase the wastage of labour power. This explains why, in spite of the gigantic population of Russia, the government finds it necessary to take special measures to increase it, such as the prohibition of abortion, fines for bachelors, and prizes for families with many children. This process goesw round in a vicious circle: lack of capital causes a wastage of labour power which makes it difficult to accumulate sufficient quantities of capital, and so on. The addition to Russia of a hundred million people from the countries of Eastern Europe is therefore an important motive for the expansion of Russian imperialism, paralleling the export of capital from the countries of advanced capitalism.

One further motive for the expansion of Stalinist Russia is strategical considerations.

The factors mentioned till now are not specific to Stalinist Russia alone. One factor, however, about which we have very incomplete information is specific. That is a slowing down of the rise in the productivity of labour.

According to our previous calculation the productivity of labour (which official Russian statisticians claim rose by 172 percent) in reality rose probably by 96.6 percent between 1928 and 1937. Whichever figure we accept, the rise is very rapid. And yet in 1937 the productivity of labour in Russian industry was still only 30 to 40 percent of that in American industry, even though the mechanisation of Russian factories is the last word in technique, and the portion of their equipment installed very recently much larger than in the US. It is not excluded theoretically that the productivity of labour rises much more quickly when the new machinery is installed than years later. For, seeing that the bureaucracy is not under workers’ control as it is in a workers’ state on the one hand, and on the other that the income of every bureaucrat is not directly connected with the quality of his management, a miscalculation at one stage of production may be introduced into the basis of planning and calculation at other stages, and so on in a cumulative process. Bureaucratic state capitalism thus may not be able to achieve the same productivity of labour using the same machinery as monopoly capitalism, not to speak of a workers’ state.

From 1941 the Russian authorities stopped systematically publishing figures showing the absolute quantity of different products produced. They publish practically only relative figures. When they say, for instance, that the output of coal in, for example, 1940 was such and such a percentage higher than in 1945, we are still in the dark, as we do not know the output for 1945. According to official Russian statistics the productivity of labour rose very much during the war years. It was, in industry as a whole, 17 percent higher in 1941 than in 1940; in 1942 it rose in the armament industry by 15 percent above 1941, in aircraft by 30 percent, in tanks by 38 percent, in light industry by 46 percent. In 1943 the productivity of labour in the armament industry was nearly 20 percent higher than in 1942, in aircraft 15.1 percent higher, in the electrical industry 19.1 percent higher, in the chemical industry 12.7 percent higher, in light industry 15.1 percent higher. Thus the productivity of labour in the armament industry in 1943 was about 70 percent higher than in 1940. [16] The rise in the productivity of labour, as well as the saving in raw materials, according to official statistics, brought about a decline in the costs ol production of war materials of 30 to 40 percent. [17] Of course such figures cannot be checked, and always in the past it has been found that the rise in percentage of uncheckable figures has been incomparably higher than in those that can be checked. It has been found, for example, that the rise in the production of coal, iron, steel, electricity, cement, textiles, etc, products whose quandary is measured in volume, has been much less than the rise in production of those products whose quantity is given only in prices, such as machinery, chemicals, etc. In addition it is difficult to know to what extent the Russian statisticians took into account the lengthening of the labour day during the wax from eight to 11 or 12 hours.

The last absolute figures as regards output were given systematically for the years 1937-40. These figures show a general extreme slowing down of the rise in production.

The tempo of the rise of the annual output will become even clearer if we compare the rise in the output of one product with its output in the previous year.

Except for coal, the years 1936-40 show a sharp drop in the rate of increase of output. The table as a whole shows to what extent bureaucratic management leads to a jerky development of production. The drastic decline in the rate of increase in the last years before the war may have been the result of the mass ‘purges’ carried out at that time, but it is possible, on the other hand, that the drop was a main cause of the panic of the government which drove it to employ the weapon of ‘purges’ in an attempt to break the bottlenecks in production. The data are too paltry to decide this question conclusively. In a few years time we shall know without doubt whether the bureaucracy has become a factor which, while it does not absolutely prevent a rise in the quantity produced and the productivity of labour, has become a factor slowing down the rate of this rise. If this is the case, to the extent that it is so it constitutes an additional motive for Stalinist Russia’s imperialist expansion, which is specific to state capitalism run by a bureaucracy.

The looting of the occupied countries, the use of their labour reserves to increase the surplus value and capital dominated over by the Russian bureaucracy, the creation of an industrial proletariat among the oppressed nations – all this creates a volcano of social and national antagonisms. The congruency of the social and national antagonisms of the local proletariat with the Russian bureaucracy must develop in the long run into a tremendous movement of national and social liberation. [19]

Next Chapter:
The class struggle in Russia

Chapter 9 Index

References

1. New International, February 1942.

2. V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, in V.I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol.V, London 1936, p.81.

3.This is an indication why it is not excluded theoretically, although in practice there is no ground to assume that it will happen, that all the national capital will be concentrated in the hands of one trust.

4. G.C. Allen, M.S. Gordon, E.F. Penrose and E.B. Schumpeter, The Industrialization of Japan and Manchukuo, 1939-1940, New York, 1940), p.10.

5. Ibid., p.15.

6. Ibid., p.33.

7. Ibid., pp.26-27.

8. F. Sternberg, The Coming Crisis, London 1947, p.73.

9. New data for E Varga and L Mendelsohn (eds), V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, London 1939, p.141. * = We have estimated the investments of France and Germany for 1935 to be 30 to 40 billion francs. This is, if anything, an overestimation.

10. For 1932-39, G.C. Allen, M.S. Gordon, E.F. Penrose and E.B. Schumpeter, op. cit., p.399; for 1940-43, A.J. Grajdanzev, Manchuria: An Industrial Survey, Pacific Affairs, December 1945.

11. Sources: K.L. Mitchell, Industrialisation of the Western Pacific, New York 1942, pp.75-78; Allan Rodgers, The Manchurian Iron arid Steel Industry and its Resource Base, Geographical Review, New York, January 1948; A.J. Grajdanzev, op. cit.

12. A. Rodgers, op. cit., p.40.

13. F. Sternberg, op. cit., p.74.

14. Ibid., p.73.

15. R.A. Brady, Business as a System of Power, New York 1943, p.3.

16. P. Kharomov, Propagandist, no.7-8, 1944.

17. S. Turetzky, Bolshevik, no.3-4, 1945.

18. * = For all products except coal we have the rise for the two years 1938-40. We have divided the rise equally for 1938-39 and 1939-40.

19. This chapter is of necessity incomplete, as an analysis of Stalinist imperialism is impossible without taking into account the nature of the Stalinist parties, the relation between them arid the masses, arid the relation between them and the bourgeoisie in the newly occupied countries of Eastern Europe. We shall deal with this in the following document which discusses the Stalinist parties and the perspectives and tasks of the Fourth International.

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Last updated on 5.1.2004