What if Nikolai Bucharin wins the powerstruggle instead of Stalin

So lets say Bucharin becomes Lenin's successor. How brutal would his regn be? Would he keep the NEP? How would his foreign policy be like?
 
As brutal as the Ural Siberian method, party unity, and failed logistics during famines require.

No. See the scissors crisis and development of the Ural Siberian method.
 
The "Scissor's Crisis " could have been solved simply by paying the peasants what the grain was worth.

And at that point the price of grain causes the urban workers to spontaneously hang the party instead of force collectivise peasants. It isn’t a viable option.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
And at that point the price of grain causes the urban workers to spontaneously hang the party instead of force collectivise peasants. It isn’t a viable option.
There would definitely be issues in the beginning with high grain prices, but could they be overcome over time as agriculture became more efficient?
 
There would definitely be issues in the beginning with high grain prices, but could they be overcome over time as agriculture became more efficient?

No. They couldn’t.

The NEP peasantry had enjoyed significant reduction in their exploitation: tithes were abolished. They predominantly engaged in small handicraft to fulfil their non-dietary needs. While they had potential disposable income the market in consumer goods disinterested them: the price of market goods produced by the urban proletariat was so relatively high compared to handicraft that peasants declined to purchase. This meant that they reduced their labour and gained leisure instead of purchasing goods and keeping their output up. Basically agricultural exertion and productivity dropped by the extent of the tithe. Nothing worth buying, nothing worth working for, work less, play more.

The party can’t get labour productivity up because of a lack of consumption goods: dairy fruit vegetable meat and corn. Secondarily textiles. The response was (predictably) mass go slows. To get that excess produced they needed an excess produced. This is true for peasantry purchases from proles, and for prole purchases from the peasantry.

The historical solution was mass enclosure and brutal proletarianisation of the peasantry into a rural working class.

Continuing the NEP would just get you a revolution, by urban workers. The “experiments” in Ural-Siberian techniques, ie forced collectivisation by urban workers with guns, was basically the start of this process. The party could ride the tiger, or it could be eaten. It would take some one with the moral integrity and flexibility of Lenin and the historical knowledge of how to enclose of Posten and Hammond & Hammond in order to do this in the least worst way. And there’ll almost certainly be some kind of famine due to market dislocations. Only in a situation where the party prioritised famine amelioration would such famines be minor. A couple of million people will perish even as the party forces *Bukharin into forced collectivisation in order to prevent the execution of party leaders by workers.

One of the two feted revolutionary classes was going to eliminate the other. Stalin and the party used it as a chance to castrate both. Bukharin is a party member. The party listens to the base before the leadership decides. He will follow the same course or be eliminated by the party.

Yours,
Sam R.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
No. They couldn’t.

The NEP peasantry had enjoyed significant reduction in their exploitation: tithes were abolished. They predominantly engaged in small handicraft to fulfil their non-dietary needs. While they had potential disposable income the market in consumer goods disinterested them: the price of market goods produced by the urban proletariat was so relatively high compared to handicraft that peasants declined to purchase. This meant that they reduced their labour and gained leisure instead of purchasing goods and keeping their output up. Basically agricultural exertion and productivity dropped by the extent of the tithe. Nothing worth buying, nothing worth working for, work less, play more.

The party can’t get labour productivity up because of a lack of consumption goods: dairy fruit vegetable meat and corn. Secondarily textiles. The response was (predictably) mass go slows. To get that excess produced they needed an excess produced. This is true for peasantry purchases from proles, and for prole purchases from the peasantry.

The historical solution was mass enclosure and brutal proletarianisation of the peasantry into a rural working class.

Continuing the NEP would just get you a revolution, by urban workers. The “experiments” in Ural-Siberian techniques, ie forced collectivisation by urban workers with guns, was basically the start of this process. The party could ride the tiger, or it could be eaten. It would take some one with the moral integrity and flexibility of Lenin and the historical knowledge of how to enclose of Posten and Hammond & Hammond in order to do this in the least worst way. And there’ll almost certainly be some kind of famine due to market dislocations. Only in a situation where the party prioritised famine amelioration would such famines be minor. A couple of million people will perish even as the party forces *Bukharin into forced collectivisation in order to prevent the execution of party leaders by workers.
Could they force the peasantry to produce an excess by implementing a land tax or setting a grain quota per acre without collectivization? It would be a fixed tax/quota, not percentage-based or total confiscation so peasants would have no reason to destroy their crops.
 
No. They couldn’t.

The NEP peasantry had enjoyed significant reduction in their exploitation: tithes were abolished. They predominantly engaged in small handicraft to fulfil their non-dietary needs. While they had potential disposable income the market in consumer goods disinterested them: the price of market goods produced by the urban proletariat was so relatively high compared to handicraft that peasants declined to purchase. This meant that they reduced their labour and gained leisure instead of purchasing goods and keeping their output up. Basically agricultural exertion and productivity dropped by the extent of the tithe. Nothing worth buying, nothing worth working for, work less, play more.

The party can’t get labour productivity up because of a lack of consumption goods: dairy fruit vegetable meat and corn. Secondarily textiles. The response was (predictably) mass go slows. To get that excess produced they needed an excess produced. This is true for peasantry purchases from proles, and for prole purchases from the peasantry.

The historical solution was mass enclosure and brutal proletarianisation of the peasantry into a rural working class.

Continuing the NEP would just get you a revolution, by urban workers. The “experiments” in Ural-Siberian techniques, ie forced collectivisation by urban workers with guns, was basically the start of this process. The party could ride the tiger, or it could be eaten. It would take some one with the moral integrity and flexibility of Lenin and the historical knowledge of how to enclose of Posten and Hammond & Hammond in order to do this in the least worst way. And there’ll almost certainly be some kind of famine due to market dislocations. Only in a situation where the party prioritised famine amelioration would such famines be minor. A couple of million people will perish even as the party forces *Bukharin into forced collectivisation in order to prevent the execution of party leaders by workers.

One of the two feted revolutionary classes was going to eliminate the other. Stalin and the party used it as a chance to castrate both. Bukharin is a party member. The party listens to the base before the leadership decides. He will follow the same course or be eliminated by the party.

Yours,
Sam R.

Drop the price of consumer goods.
 
When you implement a proportionate tax you often get a reduction of production or productivity. Also spontaneous executions and riots. (cf: 1901-1919)

When you use armed bodies of urban workers to directly extract grain you get the first five year plan.

It isn’t just that social surplus was required for the party’s programme of forced industrialisation; it is that the NEP was a broken economy. Neither one man management nor kulakism fulfilled goals. And we can use tobacco and cotton which were proletarian agriculture as a proxy for what kulak corn production would look like: an abject failure resisted by rural proletarians.
 
Ie: force urban worker productivity up and/or reduce urban worker wages. This is a great way to get the Bolshevik party liquidated.

Perhaps. perhaps not. My guess is that the Bolsheviks set the price of consumer goods so high because that is not what they wanted. They wanted huge, glamour projects not cranking out pots and pans.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Are urban workers really that great of a threat to the Bolsheviks? The Soviet security apparatus seemed highly effective at eliminating dissident leftists and suppressing strikes all the way until the end.
 
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