I think the
general point Aelita was making is that the 'uber-successful' American capitalist farming system is built on the bones of exploitation - of people, of the environment, the state and so on.
This is a statement which is a) true and b) normal. Exploitation is
vital to create the surpluses - from the landlord squeezing rent out of their tenant farmers in the 18th Century to the modern titans of business upping the hours of unpaid overtime from their cubicle-drones so to increase the profit-margins of The Company. This is something which 20th Century socialists admitted; that it was only
because their grandparents were exploited [and so went without so much] that capitalism was able to accumulate so much capital [plant and so on] that socialism had become
viable as an alternative.
This was in fact one of the main bones of contention in the Bolshevik/Menshevik split between '03 and '14; the latter argued that Russia was too backward for socialism - it needed to go through the 'capitalist' phase of development [and the expoitation for capital] as outlined above. Therefore, Marxists needed to
support the capitalists in their fight against the reactionaries like the aristocracy, clergy and landlords. This is what was seen in the 1905 Revolution; where the Socialists and Liberals joined hands
against the Czar. [And the fact the latter promptly surrendered after a few concessions were offered hardened the Bolshevik's view against the 'bourgeois liberals' and their ability to create a 'capitalist revolution'.]
That in the case of American agriculture a century or so ago, it was so much more successful because it had all the advantages of a country which had so high 'accumulations' of capital. It had a modern, dense railroad system with oodles of rolling stock, engines and stations. A myriad of capacious businesses stood at the ready to assist in the farm development; from the tractor producer to the humble concern making barbed wire - and behind both of the previous stood the
other businesses needed; the steelworks, the coal mines, the electrical plants and so on. The already existing infrastructure meant that our new farm could simply skip the 'subsistence' stage and go straight for commercial production - the Plains grain-farm didn't
have to worry about producing meat, for that came in refrigerated rail-cars or in tins, via Chicago's packing yards.
The intangable accumulations count, too. The well-oiled banking systems allowing investment loans, the strong educational base encouraging modern farming techniques [in fact, many American 'State Colleges' were founded as agronomy schools]. Even the simple fact that almost all American farmers were
literate helped; this, along with a flourishing printing industry meant that new, better innovations in production etc could be circulated quickly.
The USSR [or even late Czarist Russia] did not have
any of these advantages. Yes, it had railways, industrial plant etc but simply way too little capacity to add to the 'accumulations'. The farms in the NEP era were
terribly undercapitalised; for example, it's estimated that over half of ploughing was done with wooden implements, two thirds of gain-harvesting was done by scythe and perhaps sixty percent of threashing was by flail. Even worse, it's estimated that over
half of peasant holdings were in fact too small/inefficient to even provide the holders with sufficient food [let alone anything for sale]. Even the so-called 'Kulaks' were very thin on the ground and often merely represented the lucky few who could eat three square meals year-round, hire a man for the harvest and perhaps own some 'capital equipment', to improve productivity like a horse-plough or a decent barn/silo.
And people are expecting such a place to develop quickly towards American-levels of production
without any 'exploitation'? This sounds suspiciously similar to a 'I did it,
therefore so can you' speech delivered by Donald Trump [let's say the c2010 'businessman edition'] to a bunch of homeless people in a shelter - glossing over the fact the latter don't have $400m 'seed money' from Daddy, or the Ivy League education, the contact book and so on.
In my case, it's more of 'grimly accepting it was the only real option' in 1929. Allowing NEP to trundle on, waiting for the peasantry to gradually become as good as American farmers will take about as long as waiting for all those homeless people to become property moguls. The Party did not feel they
had a century to patiently wait, and nor could get massive aid from 'the capitalists' to speed it up. The only option left was increased exploitation of the peasantry. A few 'hard years' of tight belts and long work hours, but as the scrimping pays off and accumulations rise,
both worker and peasant will see the improvements - the former will enjoy better/more foodstuffs, while the latter better/more manufactured goods. [This was basically, the 'Left Oppositions' plan].
However, do not mistake the last paragraph as support of the methods Stalin et al took to achieve this. The mass deportations, the 'liquidation of the kulaks as a class', the constant 'sabotage' show-trials and lastly, the famine were at least unnecessary at most massively counter-productive on all fronts.
Free market economics work, yes; but
don't portray it as 'exploitation free' [or perfect, for that matter]. Even the most doctrinaire Bolshevik didn't deny that free-market capitalism
would improve agricultural output - what they criticised was that it would take far too long, it would create a new capitalist class and most likely, would end up with a pre-1914 scenario where the bulk of 'capital' in the USSR being foreign-owned/controlled.
As you're playing hindsight, I shall too for a moment. Isn't it
interesting that all the countries which successfully 'modernised' themselves to the point they can be truly be called 'advanced' after WW2 [Taiwan, South Korea, China etc] none of them operated true 'free market economies' - that instead, they ran classic examples of export-driven, 'population exploitation' models so they could build up sufficient capital etc so they could improve living standards? [In fact, most explicitly ignored the likes of the IMF, World Bank etc in their 'advice'.] That many of the nations which merely tried to 'let free market economics' make that
final leap into 'modernity' ended up instead getting in the '
middle-income trap', like with most of Latin America and modern Russia.
In fact, it can be said that the Bolsheviks showed both 'how to'
and 'how not to' rapidly industrialise/modernise a state. They were the
first to really try such a thing.