Authors

Morioka Masashi¹;  ¹ Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Discussion

A Russian liberal economist of the NEP era, Lev Litoshenko (1886–1943), is known for his budget-based analysis of Russian peasant holdings and estimation of the income and balance of the Russian national economy. In 1922, Litoshenko wrote a manuscript titled “Socialization of Land in Russia,” published for the first time in 2001 based on a copy of the manuscript kept in the Hoover Institution. While Litoshenko shared criticism against the socialist economy raised by Mises and Brutzkus, in this manuscript, he centered on the relationship between the nationalized large-scale industrial sector and the agricultural sector composed mainly of a vast number of small-scale peasant holdings.

According to Litoshenko, the most catastrophic change brought about by the socialist revolution was the destruction of the connection between agriculture and industry mediated by the market and entrepreneurial peasants. Prohibiting the free grain market for ideological reasons, the revolutionary government could not organize grain supply from rural areas to cities based on their spontaneity. In Litoshenko’s view, this trouble in grain procurement constitutes the most crucial factor in the agricultural policies of the socialist state. Due to its urgency, the danger of hunger in cities caused by food shortage makes it impossible for the government to maintain a friendly attitude toward the peasantry and tolerate its autonomy. In such a situation, the only way to avoid hunger in cities is to deprive peasants of grain by direct coercion, and the ideal of socialism can justify this measure. From this standpoint, Litoshenko argued that the merciless execution of food expropriation was a behavior consistent with socialism, and therefore, those who denounced Soviet food policy must object to Marxist socialism itself.

Litoshenko focused on the agricultural problem in his criticism of socialism because he deeply recognized that any attempt to subordinate millions of independent peasants to the socialist state forcefully would inevitably bring catastrophic results for peasants and the national economy. His argument adequately explained the destruction of Russian agriculture from 1918 to 1921 and predicted an unprecedented tragic disaster caused by forced collectivization in the early 1930s. In its unique viewpoint and deep insight, Litoshenko’s criticism of socialism has a significance comparable to that of Mises and Brutzkus.