Economic Concepts: The Delicate Balance between Realism and Romance

Revolutionary socialist governments ordinarily face a delicate choice. How much of the previous superstructure is valid and indeed necessary for the functioning of the post-revolutionary economy, and how much must be dropped or added to so as to differentiate the new order from the old? In this connection, the Soviet experience in attempting to combine various elements of realism and romanticism may be illustrative, although similar choices have no doubt occurred in other non-capitalist countries since the Second World War.1 As a contemporary Soviet writer citing the realistic Lenin puts it, The Soviet state has, since the October Revolution, traversed a complex road of economic development. Basing itself upon objective laws, it has made use, in its work, of a number of old methods and forms inherited from capitalism, such as trade, a government budget, taxes, and also of such major economic categories as price and pricing. Here, as in all its historical creations, the proletariat takes its weapons from capitalism; it does not ‘invent’, does not ‘create out of nothing’.2