Is the Russian bourgeoisie progressive?
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 eco nomic formations. This picture of a workers’ state is correct, but it is only an abstraction. The workers’ state that was es tablished 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 petit-bourgeois elements was enormous. As long as the working class, repre sented by the Bolsheviks, maintained control of the state, the pressure of the
