Published in the Gewerkschaftliche Rundschau für die Schweiz in 1933, this article is an authorized, slightly abridged republication of Lederer’s December 1932 essay. It examines Soviet industrialization as a transformation of social power, collective motivation, and economic organization. Its central distinction is between building productive capacity under collective ownership and achieving a fully coordinated planned economy. Lederer regards the first as an extraordinary accomplishment, while insisting that the second remains unfinished. The argument moves from the social and ideological prerequisites of Soviet development through industrial mobilization and planning to economic calculation and the unresolved agricultural problem.
Lederer first situates “socialism in one country” within an international predicament. The failure of world revolution left Russia without socialist partners; the unwillingness of capitalist countries to supply investment capital made rapid industrialization dependent on severe restrictions of mass consumption. Earlier experiments, including the New Economic Policy, had created conditions for the Five-Year Plan without necessarily following a consistent preparatory design. Soviet development thus appears as an adaptation to international isolation, not simply the execution of doctrine.
Five numbered discussions explain the foundations of this transformation: proletarian social predominance, the integration of nationalities, the weakening of religion, diplomatic consolidation, and materialist ideology. Lederer treats the disappearance of former ruling strata and their privileged residential spaces as evidence that the proletariat has become society itself. His conclusion is emphatic:
Die Verwandlung des Volkes in ein Arbeitervolk, des Staates in einen Arbeiterstaat hat jede Möglichkeit einer grundsätzlichen Opposition gegen den Aufbau des Sozialismus beseitigt.
English translation: The transformation of the people into a working people, of the state into a workers’ state, has eliminated every possibility of fundamental opposition to the construction of socialism.
This is Lederer’s assessment of the regime’s social foundations, not evidence that workers directly exercise political power: he later expressly acknowledges persistent oligarchic tendencies. National cultural development, anti-religious propaganda, and communist historical teaching nevertheless appear to him as mutually reinforcing sources of allegiance. Materialism supplies an encompassing worldview that makes sacrifice intelligible, but its explanatory force comes at the cost of simplification. Soviet observers cannot adequately understand Western class structures or historical possibilities, just as capitalist-minded Europeans cannot understand Russia. Technical knowledge crosses this divide more easily than cultural or social understanding.
The next movement compares Soviet industrialization with the entrepreneurial development of Europe and America. Russia substitutes concentrated collective purpose for private enrichment, despite obsolete equipment, inadequate transport, scarce skilled personnel, and an inexperienced industrial workforce. What impresses Lederer most is not administrative foresight but the capacity to release energies previously associated with wartime mobilization:
Das ist wichtiger und interessanter als die Idee des Plans, die Systematik im Aufbau, die keineswegs überschätzt werden darf.
English translation: This is more important and more interesting than the idea of the plan, the systematic organization of construction, which must by no means be overestimated.
The surrounding argument concerns industrial construction without private entrepreneurs, profits, or the pursuit of wealth. Yet mobilization has limits. Lederer’s account of exhausted workers leaving the enormous factories outside Kharkov gives deprivation a concrete presence. Enthusiasm cannot indefinitely compensate for fatigue, deficient supplies, and organizational friction. Accelerated development expands administrative burdens and produces bureaucracy; preserving broad worker participation remains, in his view, indispensable to the socialist character of the undertaking.
His answer to whether Russia possesses a planned economy is consequently “yes and no.” Yes, because collective organs direct production and create productive assets for society rather than private owners. No, if planning means balanced development and adequately coordinated satisfaction of needs. The immediate drive is to maximize output, producing bottlenecks when complementary branches grow at different speeds. Heavy industry creates the technical foundation for future consumption, but anticipating differentiated consumer needs remains a task ahead.
Die ständigen Verschiebungen im System der Preise und des Geldwerts sind das deutlichste Symptom dafür, dass wir von einer Planwirtschaft im vollendeten Sinne des Wortes noch nicht sprechen können.
English translation: The constant shifts in the system of prices and the value of money are the clearest symptom that we cannot yet speak of a planned economy in the fully realized sense of the word.
Lederer connects monetary instability to production shortfalls, deficit financing, and unequal access to rationed goods. Identical money incomes do not necessarily confer identical purchasing power. His criticism extends to the ideological rejection of profitability and Western economics. Outside capitalist ownership relations, a criterion analogous to profitability can still guide the economical allocation of investment. If urgent needs remain unmet because incomes are unequal, suppressing that criterion does not transparently correct distribution; administered prices may instead alter real incomes indirectly. Collective planning therefore requires economic calculation, alongside provision for public purposes that cannot be judged by profitability alone.
Technology likewise has no inherently socialist construction. Its socialist significance derives from collective ownership, political purpose, and the experience of building it. Machinery becomes a persuasive everyday embodiment of socialism, while questions about monotonous work and its psychological consequences are deferred behind the overriding demand for efficiency.
The conclusion identifies agriculture as the decisive unresolved condition:
Diese Entfaltung der landwirtschaftlichen Produktion auf einer neuen gesellschaftlichen Basis, mit den Mitteln kollektiver Organisation ist die wichtigste, heute noch nicht geschaffene bzw. nur in Ansätzen vorhandene Voraussetzung für den raschen, programgemässen Aufbau des Sozialismus in der Industrie.
English translation: This development of agricultural production on a new social basis, by means of collective organization, is the most important prerequisite for the rapid construction of socialism in industry according to the program—a prerequisite that has not yet been established, or exists only in rudimentary form.
Defeating the kulaks did not itself secure productive collectivization. Bureaucratic pressure, attachment to individual landownership, and liquidation of livestock aggravated shortages, which then impaired industrial labor. Cooperation must demonstrate material superiority and provide peasants with industrial goods; increased yields and transformed motivations must reinforce one another. This may require shifting industrial effort toward consumer production. The article’s enduring conceptual contribution is to separate socialist ownership and mobilization from mature planning, and to make the tempo of accumulation a political question governed by consumption, agricultural cooperation, and human endurance.
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