isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

THE PROPHET ARMED
necessity it did so by levelling down the standards of living and
making poverty universal. 1
The system could not work for long. The requisitioning of
food and the prohibition of private trade for the time being
helped the government to tide over the direst emergencies.
But in the longer run these policies aggravated and accelerated
the shrinkage and disintegration of the economy. The peasant
began to till only as much of his land as was necessary to keep
his family alive. He refused to produce the surplus for which
the requisitioning squads were on the look-out. When the
countryside refuses to produce food for the town, even the rudiments
of urban civilization go to pieces. The cities of Russia
became depopulated. Workers went to the countryside to
escape famine. Those who stayed behind fainted at the factory
benches, produced very little, and often stole what they produced
to barter it for food. The old, normal market had indeed
been abolished. But its bastard, the black market, despoiled the
country, revengefully perverting and degrading human relations.
This could go on for another year or so; but, inevitably
the end would be the breakdown of all government and the
dissolution of society.
Such was the situation to which Trotsky bent his mind
towards the end of 1919. To cope with it one of two courses of
action had to be taken. The government could stop the requisitioning
of food from the peasant and introduce an agricultural
tax, in kind or money. Having paid his taxes, the peasant could
then be permitted to dispose of his crop as he pleased, to consume
it, sell it, or barter it. This would have induced him to grow the
surpluses for urban consumption. With the flow of food from
country to town restored, the activity of the state-owned industries
could be expected to revive. This indeed would have been
the only real solution. But a reform of this kind implied the
revival of private trade; and it could not but explode the whole
edifice of war communism, in the erection of which the Bolsheviks
took so muc'1 pride.
The.alternative was to look for a solution within the vicious
circle of war communism. If the government was to go on
requisitioning food and enforcing the ban on trade, it had to
1
The reader will find a detailed and instructive account of war communism in
E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. ii.