Here, despite the repeated theoretical affirmations of such thinkers as Mao Zedong, Le Duan and Nicolai
Bukharin that heavy industrialization, the ultimate goal of any socialist economy, should be founded on the development of light industry and agriculture whether concurrently or in different stages, the leaders of the DRV chose to emphasize the development of heavy industry in a country that lacked the material and financial means to carry out such a process.
1-2, Gibarti to
Bukharin, 28 April 1927 lists members of the General and Executive committees.
He points to the influence of
Bukharin and the NEP on Gorbachev: "The indelible mark of
Bukharin's prescriptions over the above Stalinist programs represent a promising movement toward democratization of Soviet society and liberalization of the Soviet economy."(1)
Bukharin began to favor more planning and less freedom for entrepreneurs, and Stalin's much more extreme animus toward Nepmen carried the party by 1929 (but not completely until then).
It was all depressingly familiar, recalling as it did the pathetic confessions of Nikolai
Bukharin, the editor of the Communist Party newspaper Pravda, and others during Stalin's purges.
Vladimir Lenin disagreed with Lev Trotskii and Nikolai
Bukharin about trade unions.
Bukharin's "How the History of October Must not be Written," I.
Thus, in Italy--as Boothman's volume reveals--the continuing commitment to United Front tactics by certain key players at the centre (especially
Bukharin) and the sense that the threat to the Comintern leadership (increasingly dominated by
Bukharin and Stalin) was from a Trotskyite leaning 'Left' faction (Bordiga and his allies) created conditions in which Gramsci as party leader could continue to pursue United Front tactics up until his imprisonment in late 1926, when in other countries it was being rapidly superseded by Bolshevization.
Lenin and
Bukharin hotly debated the question of national self-determination and independence for countries like Ireland during World War One precisely because there was no Bolshevik line on questions of this sort.
Pollard offers a very important understanding of the role of the state in capitalist development through an approving quotation from Francis Castles, who suggests that "the very process of industrialization through which societies became more affluent produced problems which forced them to devote even greater proportions of national income to the provision of collective goods." (3) This is a useful observation, very much in line with the writings of
Bukharin, Lenin, Hilferding, and Engels on the evolving role of the state in European capitalism.
Bukharin reminds his readers that Marx knew that capital invested in the colonies procured a 'surplus profit' (1915: 86); and in his critique of Luxemburg emphasises that colonial labour was above all cheaper labour (1924: 249).