The Importance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism

Lenin’s theoretical article on the important role of the “reformist”, gradual, cautious approach to be used in economic construction and development during the New Economic. It was written on November 5, 1921, on the occasion of commemorating the fourth anniversary of the victory of the October Revolution and was published in Pravda issue No. 251, on November 6 -7 of the same year. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 42 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

The New Economic Policy has caused many problems and doubts in theory and practice. In order to eliminate all kinds of doubts of Party members and cadres, educate the whole Party and the working people of the whole country to correctly understand the essence and significance of the New Economic Policy and unify their ideological understanding, Lenin wrote this article after the “Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution”, and once again elaborated the significance of the New Economic Policy.

Lenin summed up the experience and lessons of Soviet Russia’s economic construction in the past four years, especially the implementation of the New Economic Policy for more than half a year, and he pointed out that the best way to celebrate the anniversary of the great October Revolution is to focus on the fundamental revolutionary task of economic construction that has not yet been completed, and “now there are two approaches to complete this task”: “reformist”, gradual, cautious approach and the round-about approach.

In the sense of destroying the old social economic system directly and completely and replacing it with the new one, the “wartime communist policy” implemented before the spring of 1921 was a revolutionary method, and the New Economic Policy proposed since the spring of 1921 is a “reformist” approach. Lenin added:as a general rule compared with the revolutionary method, the reformist action advances slowly, cautiously, gradually, but it does not move backward.

In Russia, where the economy and culture are relatively backward, the Soviet regime tried to use the method of “direct assault method” in the past, but failed to establish the new practical links between industry and agriculture. Now we must now try to achieve it by a number of slow, gradual, and cautious “siege” operations. Throughout the capitalist world, reforms a by-product of the proletarian revolutionary struggle, but in Russia’s “current situation it is a novelty” to adopt it.

Lenin emphasized the position and function of trade in the socialist construction, pointed out that various transitional economic forms could be used in the period of transition to socialism. At this stage (1921-1922) in order to grasp the whole economic construction chain and create the foundation of socialist social and economic relations, the ruling Communist Party, “must grasp with all our might ” “the link of revival of home trade under proper state regulation (direction)”. Lenin stressed that in Russia, where the small-scale peasant economy is dominant, trade is the only possible economic link between millions of small-scale farmers and large-scale industry. Therefore, currency circulation and true commodity exchange were essential. Lenin said: when we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world… But we need hard work and time to achive such a situation, meanwhile we must save the gold in the R.S.F.S.R., sell it at the highest price, buy goods with it at the lowest price.

The reformist gradual method expounded by Lenin in this article, namely the idea of utilizing commodity, currency and market relations in order to carry out socialist construction constituted a progress and refinement in the understanding of the New Economic Policy, and creatively developed Marxist theory on the transition to socialism after the victory of the proletarian revolution. It still offers an important enlightenment and reference significance and applicable to the socialist economic construction in economically backward countries, both in theory and in practice.