Can the Russian bourgeoisie play a progressive role?
Socialism means that the development of industry, technique, science and culture stand on a higher level than the most developed capitalist society. In that case, there is no question of society reverting to a more backward system such as commodity production. Such elements of small commodity production that remained would gradually disappear and be replaced by superior socialist forms. Compulsion would not be necessary to the degree that the small farmers and businessmen see for themselves the immense advantages of the new economic formations. This picture of a workers’ state is correct, but it is only an abstraction. The workers’ state that was established in Russia in 1917 was not on a higher economic level than Britain and the USA, but on a very primitive basis. Under the circumstances, the specific weight of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements was enormous. As long as the working class, represented by the Bolsheviks, maintained control of the state, the pressure of the bour
