Donovan > Recent Status Updates

"To restore the mass of the peasantry to the position of allies and to revive the exchange of products between town and village, it was necessary to abolish the system of requisitioning and to replace this initially by an agricultural tax in kind. ...The proposed tax was to be assessed as a proportion of the net produce above minimum subsistence needs of the family."

"...the economist Preobrazhensky...preached the inevitable 'dying out of money' in Soviet economy and welcomed the inflationary printing press as 'that machine-gun which attacked the bourgeois regime in its rear, namely through its monetary system'. 'Honour to our printing presses,' he wrote in a study of paper money in the Soviet epoch. (pp. 121-122)

Tools + cooperation + history = machines.

"Already in August, 1918, a decree of Vesenkha had stipulated that "settlements for products delivered or received are to be effected by means of book entries without the use of money", thereby eliminating money as a medium for transactions between State undertakings." etc etc.

"The surplus produce of each peasant farm, over and above the essential needs of subsistence and seed-corn, was subjected the allocation of it between the army and industry and the main distribution-points for workers' rations, being organised by the Commissariat of Supplies (Narcomprod)."

"To complicate matters further, [Bela] Kun was very actively engaged in initiatives involving countries bordering on Hungary. ...In June 1919, the army of the new Hungarian government invaded Slovakia and set up a republic of soviets. The following month the Hungarian troops withdrew from Slovakia and the republic of soviets collapsed (its communist leaders fleeing to Hungary."

"Against those who repeated traditional formulas about the dangers and oppressiveness of State Capitalism he emphasised that such fears were groundless in the novel situation where the working class held State power and occupied the "key positions" from which it could steer the course of development. In such circumstances it was with an "encircled Capitalism" that compromises were being made."

The NKVD and the Party frequently disagreed with each other.

Tools + cooperation + history = machines.

"The Roman Empire handed down the elementary form of all machinery in the shape of the water-weel. The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions of the compass, gunpowder, type-printing, and the automatic clock."

Talking about how imperialist countries dump their commodities.

Talking about how imperialist countries dumb their commodities.