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Leon Trotsky: 1935: If America Should Go Communist

Leon Trotsky's

If America Should Go Communist

Transcribed for the Trotsky

Internet Archive by [e-mail]

From Liberty, March 23, 1935


August 17, 1934



Should America go communist as a result of the difficulties and problems

that your capitalist social order is unable to solve, it will discover

that communism, far from being an intolerable bureaucratic tyranny and

individual regimentation, will be the means of greater individual liberty

and shared abundance.



At present most Americans regard communism solely in the light of the

experience of the Soviet Union. They fear lest Sovietism in America would

produce the same material result as it has brought for the culturally backward

peoples of the Soviet Union.



They fear lest communism should try to fit them to a bed of Procrustes,

and they point to the bulwark of Anglo-Saxon conservatism as an insuperable

obstacle even to possibly desirable reforms. They argue that Great Britain

and Japan would undertake military intervention against the American soviets.

They shudder lest Americans be regimented in their habits of dress and

diet, be compelled to subsist on famine rations, be forced to read stereotyped

official propaganda in the newspapers, be coerced to serve as rubber stamps

for decisions arrived at without their active participation or be required

to keep their thoughts to themselves and loudly praise their soviet leaders

in public, through fear of imprisonment and exile.



They fear monetary inflation, bureaucratic tyranny and intolerable red

tape in obtaining the necessities of life. They fear soulless standardization

in the arts and sciences, as well as in the daily necessities of life.

They fear that all political spontaneity and the presumed freedom of the

press will be destroyed by the dictatorship of a monstrous bureaucracy.

And they shudder at the thought of being forced into an uncomprehended

glibness in Marxist dialectic and disciplined social philosophies. They

fear, in a word, that Soviet America will become the counterpart of what

they have been told Soviet Russia looks like.



Actually American soviets will be as different from the Russian soviets

as the United States of President Roosevelt differs from the Russian Empire

of Czar Nicholas II. Yet communism can come in America only through revolution,

just as independence and democracy came in America. The American temperament

is energetic and violent, and it will insist on breaking a good many dishes

and upsetting a good many apple carts before communism is firmly established.

Americans are enthusiasts and sportsmen before they are specialists and

statesmen, and it would be contrary to the American tradition to make a

major change without choosing sides and cracking heads.



However, the American communist revolution will be insignificant compared

to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, in terms of your national wealth

and population, no matter how great its comparative cost. That is because

civil war of a revolutionary nature isn't fought by the handful of men

at the top -- the 5 or 10 percent who own nine-tenths of American wealth;

this handful could recruit its counterrevolutionary armies only from among

the lower middle classes. Even so, the revolution could easily attract

them to its banner by showing that support of the soviets alone offers

them the prospect of salvation.



Everybody below this group is already economically prepared for communism.

The depression has ravaged your working class and has dealt a crushing

blow to the farmers, who had already been injured by the long agricultural

decline of the postwar decade. There is no reason why these groups should

counterpose determined resistance to the revolution; they have nothing

to lose, providing, of course, that the revolutionary leaders adopt a farsightcd

and moderate policy toward them.



Who else will fight against communism? Your corporal's guard of billionaires

and multimillionaires? Your Mellons, Morgans, Fords and Rockefellers? They

will cease struggling as soon as they fail to find other people to fight

for them.



The American soviet government will take firm possession of the commanding

heights of your business system: the banks, the key industries and the

transportation and communication systems. It will then give the farmers,

the small tradespeople and businessmen a good long time to think things

over and see how well the nationalized section of industry is working.



Here is where the American soviets can produce real miracles. "Technocracy"

can come true only under communism, when the dead hands of private property

rights and private profits are lifted from your industrial system. The

most daring proposals of the Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization

will seem childish compared to the new possibilities let loose by American

communism.



National industry will be organized along the line of the conveyor belt

in your modern continuous-production automotive factories. Scientific planning

can be lifted out of the individual factory and applied to your entire

economic system. The results will be stupendous.



Costs of production will be cut to 20 percent, or less, of their present

figure. This, in turn, would rapidly increase your farmers' purchasing

power.



To be sure, the American soviets would establish their own gigantic

farm enterprises, as schools of voluntary collectivization. Your farmers

could easily calculate whether it was to their individual advantage to

remain as isolated links or to join the public chain.



The same method would be used to draw small businesses and industries

into the national organization of industry. By soviet control of raw materials,

credits and quotas of orders, these secondary industries could be kept

solvent until they were gradually and without compulsion sucked into the

socialized business system.



Without compulsion! The American soviets would not need to resort to

the drastic measures that circumstances have often imposed upon the Russians.

In the United States, through the science of publicity and advertising,

you have means for winning the support of your middle class that were beyond

the reach of the soviets of backward Russia with its vast majority of pauperized

and illiterate peasants. This, in addition to your technical equipment

and your wealth, is the greatest asset of your coming communist revolution.

Your revolution will be smoother in character than ours; you will not waste

your energies and resources in costly social conflicts after the main issues

have been decided; and you will move ahead so much more rapidly in consequence.



Even the intensity and devotion of religious sentiment in America will

not prove an obstacle to the revolution. If one assumes the perspective

of soviets in America, none of the psychological brakes will prove firm

enough to retard the pressure of the social crisis. This has been demonstrated

more than once in history. Besides, it should not be forgotten that the

Gospels themselves contain some pretty explosive aphorisms.



As to the comparatively few opponents of the soviet revolution, one

can trust to American inventive genius. It may well be that you will take

your unconvinced millionaires and send them to some picturesque island,

rent-free for life, where they can do as they please.



You can do this safely, for you will not need to fear foreign interventions.

Japan, Great Britain and the other capitalistic countries that intervened

in Russia couldn't do anything but take American communism lying down.

As a matter of fact, the victory of communism in America -- the stronghold

of capitalism -- will cause communism to spread to other countries. Japan

will probably have joined the communistic ranks even before the establishment

of the American soviets. The same is true of Great Britain.



In any case, it would be a crazy idea to send His Britannic Majesty's

fleet against Soviet America, even as a raid against the southern and more

conservative half of your continent. It would be hopeless and would never

get any farther than a second-rate military escapade.



Within a few weeks or months of the establishment of the American soviets,

Pan-Americanism would be a political reality.



The governments of Central and South America would be pulled into your

federation like iron filings to a magnet. So would Canada. The popular

movements in these countries would be so strong that they would force this

great unifying process within a short period and at insignificant costs.

I am ready to bet that the first anniversary of the American soviets would

find the Western Hemisphere transformed into the Soviet United States of

North, Central and South America, with its capital at Panama. Thus for

the first time the Monroe Doctrine would have a complete and positive meaning

in world affairs, although not the one foreseen by its author.



In spite of the complaints of some of your arch-conservatives, Roosevelt

is not preparing for a soviet transformation of the United States.



The NRA aims not to destroy but to strengthen the foundations of American

capitalism by overcoming your business difficulties. Not the Blue Eagle

but the difficulties that the Blue Eagle is powerless to overcome will

bring about communism in America. The "radical" professors of your Brain

Trust are not revolutionists: they are only frightened conservatives. Your

president abhors "systems" and "generalities." But a soviet government

is the greatest of all possible systems, a gigantic generality in action.



The average man doesn't like systems or generalities either. It is the

task of your communist statesmen to make the system deliver the concrete

goods that the average man desires: his food, cigars, amusements, his freedom

to choose his own neckties, his own house and his own automobile. It will

be easy to give him these comforts in Soviet America.



Most Americans have been misled by the fact that in the USSR we had

to build whole new basic industries from the ground up. Such a thing could

not happen in America, where you are already compelled to cut down on your

farm area and to reduce your industrial production. As a matter of fact,

your tremendous technological equipment has been paralyzed by the crisis

and already clamors to be put to use. You will be able to make a rapid

step-up of consumption by your people the starting point of your economic

revival.



You are prepared to do this as is no other country. Nowhere else has

the study of the internal market reached such intensity as in the United

States. It has been done by your banks, trusts, individual businessmen,

merchants, traveling salesmen and farmers as part of their stock-in-trade.

Your soviet government will simply abolish all trade secrets, will combine

all the findings of these researches for individual profit and will transform

them into a scientific system of economic planning. In this your government

will be helped by the existence of a large class of cultured and critical

consumers. By combining the nationalized key industries, your private businesses

and democratic consumer cooperation, you will quickly develop a highly

flexible system for serving the needs of your population.



This system will be made to work not by bureaucracy and not by policemen

but by cold, hard cash.



Your almighty dollar will play a principal part in making your new soviet

system work. It is a great mistake to try to mix a "planned economy" with

a "managed currency." Your money must act as regulator with which to measure

the success or failure of your planning.



Your "radical" professors are dead wrong in their devotion to "managed

money." It is an academic idea that could easily wreck your entire system

of distribution and production. That is the great lesson to be derived

from the Soviet Union, where bitter necessity has been converted into official

virtue in the monetary realm.



There the lack of a stable gold ruble is one of the main causes of our

many economic troubles and catastrophes. It is impossible to regulate wages,

prices and quality of goods without a firm monetary system. An unstable

ruble in a Soviet system is like having variable molds in a conveyor-belt

factory. It won't work.



Only when socialism succeeds in substituting administrative control

for money will it be possible to abandon a stable gold currency. Then money

will become ordinary paper slips, like trolley or theater tickets. As socialism

advances, these slips will also disappear, and control over individual

consumption -- whether by money or administration -- will no longer be

necessary when there is more than enough of everything for everybody!



Such a time has not yet come, though America will certainly reach it

before any other country. Until then, the only way to reach such a state

of development is to retain an effective regulator and measure for the

working of your system. As a matter of fact, during the first few years

a planned economy needs sound money even more than did old-fashioned capitalism.

The professor who regulates the monetary unit with the aim of regulating

the whole business system is like the man who tried to lift both his feet

off the ground at the same time.



Soviet America will possess supplies of gold big enough to stabilize

the dollar -- a priceless asset. In Russia we have been expanding our industrial

plant by 20 and 30 percent a year; but -- owing to a weak ruble -- we have

not been able to distribute this increase effectively. This is partly because

we have allowed our bureaucracy to subject our monetary system to administrative

one-sidedness. You will be spared this evil. As a result you will greatly

surpass us in both increased production and distribution, leading to a

rapid advance in the comfort and welfare of your population.



In all this, you will not need to imitate our standardized production

for our pitiable mass consumers. We have taken over from czarist Russia

a pauper's heritage, a culturally undeveloped peasantry with a low standard

of living. We had to build our factories and dams at the expense of our

consumers. We have had continual monetary inflation and a monstrous bureaucracy.



Soviet America will not have to imitate our bureaucratic methods. Among

us the lack of the bare necessities has caused an intense scramble for

an extra loaf of bread, an extra yard of cloth by everyone. In this struggle

our bureaucracy steps forward as a conciliator, as an all-powerful court

of arbitration. You, on the other hand, are much wealthier and would have

little difficulty in supplying all of your people with all of the necessities

of life. Moreover, your needs, tastes and habits would never permit your

bureaucracy to divide the national income. Instead, when you organize your

society to produce for human needs rather than private profits, your entire

population will group itself around new trends and groups, which will struggle

with one another and prevent an overweening bureaucracy from imposing itself

upon them.



You can thus avoid growth of bureaucratism by the practice of soviets,

that is to say, democracy -- the most flexible form of government yet developed.

Soviet organization cannot achieve miracles but must simply reflect the

will of the people. With us the soviets have been bureaucratized as a result

of the political monopoly of a single party, which has itself become a

bureaucracy. This situation resulted from the exceptional difficulties

of socialist pioneering in a poor and backward country.



The American soviets will be full-blooded and vigorous, without need

or opportunity for such measures as circumstances imposed upon Russia.

Your unregenerate capitalists will, of course, find no place for themselves

in the new setup. It is hard to imagine Henry Ford as the head of the Detroit

Soviet.



Yet a wide struggle between interests, groups and ideas is not only

conceivable -- it is inevitable. One-year, five-year, ten-year plans of

business development; schemes for national education; construction of new

basic lines of transportation; the transformation of the farms; the program

for improving the technological and cultural equipment of Latin America;

a program for stratosphere communication; eugenics -- all of these will

arouse controversy, vigorous electoral struggle and passionate debate in

the newspapers and at public meetings.



For Soviet America will not imitate the monopoly of the press by the

heads of Soviet Russia's bureaucracy. While Soviet America would nationalize

all printing plants, paper mills and means of distribution, this would

be a purely negative measure. It would simply mean that private capital

will no longer be allowed to decide what publications should be established,

whether they should be progressive or reactionary, "wet" or "dry," puritanical

or pornographic. Soviet America will have to find a new solution for the

question of how the power of the press is to function in a socialist regime.

It might be done on the basis of proportional representation for the votes

in each soviet election.



Thus the right of each group of citizens to use the power of the press

would depend on their numerical strength -- the same principle being applied

to the use of meeting halls, allotment of time on the air and so forth.



Thus the management and policy of publications would be decided not

by individual checkbooks but by group ideas. This may take little account

of numerically small but important groups, but it simply means that each

new idea will be compelled, as throughout history, to prove its right to

existence.



Rich Soviet America can set aside vast funds for research and invention,

discoveries and experiments in every field. You won't neglect your bold

architects and sculptors, your unconventional poets and audacious philosophers.



In fact, the Soviet Yankees of the future will give a lead to Europe

in those very fields where Europe has hitherto been your master. Europeans

have little conception of the power of technology to influence human destiny

and have adopted an attitude of sneering superiority toward "Americanism,"

particularly since the crisis. Yet Americanism marks the true dividing

line between the Middle Ages and the modern world.



Hitherto America's conquest of nature has been so violent and passionate

that you have had no time to modernize your philosophies or to develop

your own artistic forms. Hence you have been hostile to the doctrines of

Hegel, Marx and Darwin. The burning of Darwin's works by the Baptists of

Tennessee is only a clumsy reflection of the American dislike for the doctrines

of evolution. This attitude is not confined to your pulpits. It is still

part of your general mental makeup.



Your atheists as well as your Quakers are determined rationalists. And

your rationalism itself is weakened by empiricism and moralism. It has

none of the merciless vitality of the great European rationalists. So your

philosophic method is even more antiquated than your economic system and

your political institutions.



Today, quite unprepared, you are being forced to face those social contradictions

that grow up unsuspected in every society. You have conquered nature by

means of the tools that your inventive genius has created, only to find

that your tools have all but destroyed you. Contrary to all your hopes

and desires, your unheard-of wealth has produced unheard-of misfortunes.

You have discovered that social development does not follow a simple formula.

Hence you have been thrust into the school of the dialectic -- to stay.



There is no turning back from it to the mode of thinking and acting

prevalent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.



While the romantic numskulls of Nazi Germany are dreaming of restoring

the old race of Europe's Dark Forest to its original purity, or rather

its original filth, you Americans, after taking a firm grip on your economic

machinery and your culture, will apply genuine scientific methods to the

problem of eugenics. Within a century, out of your melting pot of races

there will come a new breed of men -- the first worthy of the name of Man.



One final prophecy: In the third year of soviet rule in America, you

will no longer chew gum!



















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