Why did stalin employ a command economy(communism) is his society when he came to power?
The Russian Revolution which brought an end to the Romanov dynasty saw the Bosheviks gain power who formed the Communist Party of the Russian Federal Socialist Republic, later known as the Soviet Union. On the death of Lenin, Stalin became General Secretary of the Communist Party and de facto head of state.l The party’s economic and social policies and programs were based on Marxist philosophy and economics { Karl Marx who wrote ‘Das Kapital’] which advocated workers’ control of the means of production and distribution and the ultimate withering away of the state as the free and classless society of communism was achieved. Under Stalin, this never happened and was never intended, as government control over the economy was tightened and the Soviet Union’s resources were reorganised with successive 5-year plans setting production targets for all industrial sectors and agriculture.. It is this kind of ‘top down’ planning of investment and production which later became known as a ‘command
Just through sheer momentum did Stalin continue on with the economics which coincided with the revolutionary politics of Leninism. Stalin wasn’t astute enough to formulate another economic policy or sophisticated enough to put a market economy into place. The whole point in the first place was to justify any system which could be used in bringing down the Czar at any cost (just as the political left in America will say anything to trip-up George W. Bush, including bad weather, hurricane Katrina). That economic system used to justify overthrowing the Czar and the brutal murder of him and his family by Lenin, Trotsky, and somewhat Stalin was Communism. Communism was alledged to provide a worker’s paradise free from capitalistic exploitation and the class system which the Romanov’s used to suppress the people. Too bad communism is the worse at suppressing people.
