This in turn contributes seriously to the persistent lag in the growth of productivity in agriculture. Nor is it easy to compensate for the relative weakness of the agricultural labor force by the employment of technical devices. Work in industry gives rise to discipline and standards of performance by a specific momentum of its own. The collective nature of the activity involved, its structuring and timing by conveyor belts and similar arrangements, the interdependence and indispensability of specific operations—all impose on the industrial worker a certain rhythm of work which sets its tone, determines its tempo, and largely acounts for its outcome. The situation in agriculture is quite different—such modernization of agricultural methods of production as has taken place notwithstanding. Apart from certain collective functions, the individual worker is to a large extent on his own. Whether in plowing a field or in tending to an animal, it is his (or her) initiative, conscientiousness, and exertion which markedly influence the degree of success attained. And where hide-bound conservatism, irresponsibility, and aversion to hard work characterize those working in agriculture, aggregate agricultural output is bound to be seriously affected.
Under capitalist conditions the tendency of the cream of agricultural manpower to migrate to the cities has usually been kept in check by the slowness of the capital accumulation process and by the more or less chronic shortage of urban jobs resulting therefrom. Accordingly, agriculture remained overcrowded, competition in it fierce, and productivity and real income per man increased much more slowly than productivity per acre. In the socialist society matters had to take a different course. The collective, large-scale organization of agriculture which, by doing away with the unviable dwarfholdings of the peasantry, creates the indispensable conditions for the long-term, sustained growth of agricultural production, transforms the peasant into an industrial worker working in agriculture. In this way it insulates him from the ruinous impact of the capitalist market, immunizes him against the sticks and carrots of the competitive struggle, without putting him at the same time into the framework of integration, coordination, and discipline characteristic of a large-scale modern industrial enterprise. And what is even more paradoxical and economically serious: by advancing him to the status of a full-fledged working member of a socialist society, it accords him automatically a claim to a share of aggregate social output, to real income, which is at least approximately equal to the shares of other, more productive workers.
This amounts in effect to a reversal of the earlier relation: agriculture becomes subsidized by industry. This is exactly as it should be, except that these subsidies do not lead to an adequate expansion of agricultural output. In the longer run this problem can, and undoubtedly will, be solved. Once a considerably higher stage of economic development is reached, the living and working conditions in city and countryside will be more nearly equalized and it will become possible to provide for the movement of skilled, educated, and socially conscious and responsible workers not only from the village to the city but also from the city to the village, with both of these movements turning into a general means of enhancing the variety, stimulation, and gratification derived from productive work in industry as well as in agriculture. Before that situation is reached, however, there is still a long way to go. In the meantime, in different socialist countries reliance is placed on different palliatives. In some countries the collectivization of agriculture was halted (or even reversed) with a regulated exchange between city and village taking the place of an immediate socialization of agriculture. In another socialist country, China, a solution has been sought in the opposite direction, through a more rapid transformation of the peasant economy into a system of socially operated, disciplined, large-scale agricultural enterprises. In the Soviet Union an in-between course has been followed: agricultural work is being “re-glamorized,” investment in agriculture is being increased as much as possible, and incentives to collective farmers raised by shifting relative prices in favor of agriculture. Much of this puts an additional strain on the industrial economy, cuts into real wages of industrial workers, and reduces the volume of surplus investible outside of agriculture, thus slowing down the overall rate of economic growth. Even so, the agricultural difficulties, not insuperable but seriously hampering and retarding the development of the socialist societies, represent only a fraction of the tremendous price which the socialist societies have to pay for having first emerged in underdeveloped countries.
It is against the background of this economic stringency—the insufficiency of agricultural output to keep pace with the rising living standards of the people, and the shortage of industrial output in the face of rapidly growing demands from within and without the individual socialist countries—as well as of the intensified class struggle in the international arena that one must consider the political troubles within the socialist camp. Under this heading, there is in the first place the all-important problem of retention of popular support by the socialist government during the most trying effort to initiate the “steep ascent.” What has come to be called the “revolution of rising expectations” which is sweeping the world’s underdeveloped countries confronts not only reactionary and corrupt regimes seeking to stem it by all available means, but also revolutionary governments dedicated to economic development and socialism. Since a rational plan of economic advancement calls not for the shot-in-the-arm policy of an immediate increase of popular consumption, but for a well-considered strategy of assuring maximum possible rates of growth over a planning horizon of, say 10-20 years, it is not only possible but most likely that during the early phase of the effort mass consumption should rise very slowly, if at all. Only after the foundations of a progressive economy have been laid, and the “hump” overcome, can the system begin to yield fruits in the form of an expanding supply of consumer goods, housing, and the like.
Yet the masses who have just been through a revolution, who have fought and suffered in the bitter struggles against their class enemies and exploiters at home and abroad, seek and feel entitled to immediate improvements in the daily lives of their cities and villages. The fledgling socialist government cannot conjure such improvements out of the ground. Still engaged in the “uninterrupted revolution,” it must demand “blood, sweat, and toil” without being able to offer commensurable rewards hic et nunc. Only the most class-conscious and insightful groups in society recognize and comprehend the momentous issues involved. Broad strata of the population, unaccustomed to thinking in terms of economic necessities and longer-run perspectives can easily become disaffected, can fall prey to enemy propaganda which seeks to capitalize on their age-old superstitions and ignorance, can lose their faith in the revolution. They do not grasp that the suffering under the ancien régime was suffering for the benefit of their domestic overlords and their imperialist exploiters, that the misery which they had to endure in the past was misery without hope and prospect—while the privations accompanying the revolution are the birth-pangs of a new and better society. And ignoring this fundamental difference, they frequently became apathetic or even hostile to the revolution itself. This inevitably gives rise to a more or less acute conflict between socialism and democracy, between people’s long-run needs and their short-run wants. Under such circumstances the socialist government’s unwavering and uncompromising commitment to the overriding interests of society as a whole, its unquestionable duty to defend these interests against their foreign and domestic enemies no less than against opportunists and traitors among its adherents, creates the need for political repression, for curtailment of civil liberties, for limitation of individual freedom. This need can only recede and eventually disappear when the objective hurdles are at least approximately mastered, when the most burning economic problems are at least approximately solved, and when the socialist government has attained a measure of stability and equilibrium.32
Stemming from the same basic cause, in one word poverty, is the second category of troubles besetting the socialist camp: the relations among socialist countries. These relations have