Integrated Economic Plan

Lenin’s important work elaborating on socialist economic planning. It was written on February 21, 1921, and published in Pravda, issue No. 39, on the 22nd February of 1921. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 40 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

In the second half of 1920, Soviet Russia ended three years of civil war. In order to cure the wounds of war, quickly recover and develop the national economy, and establish the socialist economic foundation, Lenin argued that it should be started to carry out more planned economic construction, scientifically formulate and thoroughly implement a central integrated plan for the whole national economy. In view of the importance of electrification, he proposed the establishment of the national electrification commission, which would lead all sectors of the national economy according to a unified economic plan. According to Lenin’s instructions, the resolution on electrification was adopted at the 7th session of the the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, between February 2 to 7, 1920, which instructed the Supreme Economic Council to work out a draft plan for the establishment of a power station network together with the Ministry of Agricultural People’s Committee and approved the establishment of the National Electrification Commission on February 21st.

In December 1920, the Commission drew up and published the Plan for the Electrification of the Russian Federation (R.S.F.S.R.) which was presented to the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets and distributed to the delegates on the occasion of the Congress, and was approved by a resolution of the Congress, which called for its widespread propagation and study.

In the report on domestic and foreign policies delivered by Lenin at this Congress, he called it as the “Second Party Program”. However, some party members and party theoreticians, instead of publicizing the plan that had been drawn up, published a series of literary and bureaucratic hollow arguments in the Economic Life Newspaper, the organ of the Supreme National Economic Council, and their opinions were divided for a while.

What was worse, some government officials ignored the plan or “explained it” in an arrogant bureaucratic apathy. In order to illustrate the significance and full value of the plan and to avoid the endless discussion and argument, Lenin wrote this article. Main contents: (1) This article briefly describes the writing process, content and significance of the Plan for the Electrification of the Russian Federation (R.S.F.S.R.) and highly appraises the work of this unified economic plan formulated by hundreds of excellent experts, and is the only serious, rich and excellent scientific work: it contained a summary of electrification and national economic plan, engineering outline of each region, calculation of each industrial sector, long-term planning of 10-15 years, short-term annual planning, calculation of human and material resources, material balance sheet and capital balance sheet of electrification, etc. Although it is only a rough, preliminary, and even wrong plan, experts have made accurate calculations and specific arrangements for all the basic issues in the plan, which is not easy to achieve in the environment where Russian intellectuals and senior officials are accustomed to bureaucracy. (2) This article expounds the necessity of widely absorbing Non-Party experts to participate in the work of the State Planning Commission and advocates that science and technology experts and scholars should have an absolute advantage in the State Planning Commission. Lenin severely criticized the wrong attitude of some writers and administrators of the Communist Party towards the plan, stating such arguments as “why not implement coal gasification” or “the Russian State Electrification Commission is full of bourgeois experts and there are just a few Communist Party members” and so on, —he pointed out that this shows that the arrogance of the senior officials and the intellectuals of the Communist Party members and writers overwhelms the real practical work. It is the most obvious manifestation of the bureaucracy and the common mistakes of the intellectuals in the government organs, especially in the upper levels. They should respect science and abandon the arrogance of laymen and bureaucrats. (3) The Party members, writers and administrators are required to take a practical attitude towards the unified economic plan, they should not be allowed to discuss and argue about the “principles” for the preparation of the plan, they should focus on combining the scientific electrification plan with the daily practical plans and their specific implementation, and study in detail the implementation of various plans and their actual work, and then, according to the practical experience and practice carefully studied, the plan will be supplemented, developed, modified and implemented. (4) It is required that the writers and administrative staff of the Communist Party should have a correct attitude towards science and technology experts, especially the bourgeois experts and scholars, adopt an extremely cautious and flexible attitude, learn more from them, and give less orders and play with administrative means. In particular, from the point of view that communists should learn to manage Russia, he explained the importance and necessity of learning to be modest and to respect the practical work of “science and technology experts”. Bourgeois experts in the field of science and technology who boast their mastery of business are ten times more valuable than arrogant Communist Party members. The Communist who has failed to prove his ability to bring together and guide the work of specialists in a spirit of modesty, going to the heart of the matter and studying it in detail, is a potential menace. We have many such Communists among us, and I would gladly swap dozens of them for one conscientious qualified bourgeois specialist.

Lenin suggested: what we need is more factual knowledge and fewer debates on ostensible communist principles. Communist administrator’s prime duty is to learn to start by looking at the achievements of science, insisting on a verification of the facts, he should have less of this intellectualist and bureaucratic complacency, and a deeper scrutiny of the practical experience being gained in the centre and in the localities, and of the available achievements of science. This calls for modesty and respect for the efficient “specialists in science and technology”, and a business-like and careful analysis of our numerous practical mistakes, and their gradual but steady correction.

This article established the basic principles, lines and guidelines for the Russian Federation (R.S.F.S.R.) to formulate and implement the socialist national economic plan with scientific methods and played an important role in promoting the transformation from empty talk in the planning work to solid research and actual implementation of the unified economic plan formulated by scholars.