N. Ossinsky’s Critique of State Capitalism in Russia (‘Kommunist’, April 1918)

On its website the CWO has recently published an English translation of the first part of a two part article, written by Nikolai Ossinsky for the review Kommunist, with the title: The construction of Socialism. This article appeared in the first two issues (April 20 and April 27, 1918) of the organ of the first left fraction that emerged within the Bolshevik party after the takeover of power in Russia by the soviets in October 1917. The latter organized in the course of the Spring of 1918 around Bukharin and Radek in the Moscow party bureau, in opposition to the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk separate ‘peace treaty’ by the Soviet government with Germany and on the question of addressing the catastrophic economic situation the revolution in Russia was facing in the most dire and immediate ways. In his article Ossinsky drew on the latter questions from a proletarian perspective. In the following we reproduce the CWO’s introduction to Ossinsky’s article with reference to Lenin’s polemic, who made a turn on the question of the economic and political measures to be taken by the soviet government, and thereby on the question of “nationalization” and the role of the proletariat. We want to encourage our readers to take notice of the forthcoming translation of this article as a whole. H.C.