The Contradictions of Collectivization: Trotsky on Bureaucracy, Inequality, and the Degeneration of the Soviet State
Leon Trotsky’s critique of Soviet agriculture in the 1930s offers a piercing examination of the contradictions that emerged under Stalin’s regime. Far from building socialism, the bureaucracy entrenched itself as a parasitic caste, exploiting the collectivized countryside and fostering a new layer of inequality that undermined the very principles of the October Revolution. Through a careful analysis of livestock development, income disparities, and bureaucratic parasitism, Trotsky reveals how the degeneration of the workers’ state unfolded most clearly in the rural economy. Trotsky begins with seemingly minor agricultural statistics—declining horse populations, rising cattle numbers—to expose deeper social dynamics. Horses, he notes, were exclusively collective property, while cows often remained in the personal hands of collectivized peasants. This disparity in growth was not just a matter of animal husbandry but a reflection of how individual incentives were driving development ...