Granting Legislative Functions to the State Planning Commission
#PUBLICATION NOTE
This edition of Granting Legislative Functions to the State Planning Commission has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the edition published in the Collected Works of Lenin, Fourth English Edition, Volume 36, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966.
#INTRODUCTION NOTE
This is a letter from Comrade Nikolaj Lenin in Gorki, Russia to Comrade I.B. Stalin in Moscow, Russia dated the 27th, 28th, and 29th of December, 1922. It was first published as part of the collection Lenin's Testament in 1956 together with a number of forged documents.
#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!
#GRANTING LEGISLATIVE FUNCTIONS TO THE STATE PLANNING COMMISSION
#LETTER TO I.B. STALIN
#Nikolaj Lenin
#27th to 29th of December, 1922
#★
#1
This idea was suggested by Comrade Trotskij, it seems, quite a long time ago. I was against it at the time, because I thought that there would then be a fundamental lack of coordination in the system of our legislative institutions. But, after closer consideration of the matter, I find that in substance there is a sound idea in it, namely: the State Planning Commission stands somewhat apart from our legislative institutions, although, as a body of experienced people, experts, representatives of science and technology, it is actually in a better position to form a correct judgement of affairs.
However, we have so far proceeded from the principle that the State Planning Commission must provide the State with critically analysed material and the State institutions must decide State matters. I think that, in the present situation, when affairs of State have become unusually complicated, when it is necessary time and again to settle questions of which some require the expert opinion of the members of the State Planning Commission and some do not, and, what is more, to settle matters which need the expert opinion of the State Planning Commission on some points but not on others — I think that we must now take a step towards extending the competence of the State Planning Commission.
I imagine that step to be such that the decisions of the State Planning Commission could not be rejected by ordinary procedure in council bodies, but would need a special procedure to be reconsidered. For example, the question should be submitted to a session of the National Central Executive Committee, prepared for reconsideration according to a special instruction, involving the drawing up, under special rules, of memoranda to examine whether the State Planning Commission decision is subject to reversal. Lastly, special time limits should be set for the reconsideration of State Planning Commission decisions, and so on.
In this respect, I think we can and must accede to the wishes of Comrade Trotskij, but not in the sense that specifically any one of our political directors, or the Chairperson of the Supreme Economic Council, and so on, should be Chairperson of the State Planning Commission. I think that personal matters are at present too closely interwoven with the question of principle. I think that the attacks which are now made against the Chairperson of the State Planning Commission, Comrade Krzizanovskij, and Comrade Pjatakov, his deputy, and which proceed along two lines, so that, on the one hand, we hear charges of extreme leniency, lack of independent judgement, and lack of backbone, and, on the other, charges of excessive coarseness, drill-sergeant methods, lack of solid scientific background, and so on — I think these attacks express two sides of the question, exaggerating them to the extreme, and that in actual fact we need a skilful combination in the State Planning Commission of two types of character, of which one may be exemplified by Comrade Pjatakov and the other by Comrade Krzizanovskij.
I think that the State Planning Commission must be headed by a person who, on the one hand, has scientific education, namely, either technical or agronomic, with decades of experience in practical work in the field of technology or of agronomy. I think this person must possess not so much the qualities of an administrator as broad experience and the ability to enlist the services of other people.
#Lenin
#27th of December, 1922
#Taken Down by M.V.
#2
I have noticed that some of our comrades who are able to exercise a decisive influence on the direction of State affairs, exaggerate the administrative side, which, of course, is necessary in its time and place, but which should not be confused with the scientific side, with a grasp of the broad facts, the ability to recruit people, and so on.
In every State institution, especially in the State Planning Commission, the combination of these two qualities is essential; and when Comrade Krzizanovskij told me that he had enlisted the services of Comrade Pjatakov for the Commission and had come to terms with him about the work, I, in consenting to this, on the one hand, entertained certain doubts and, on the other, sometimes hoped that we would thus get the combination of the two types of statesmen. To see whether those hopes are justified, we must now wait and consider the matter on the strength of somewhat longer experience, but, in principle, I think, there can be no doubt that such a combination of temperaments and types (of people and qualities) is absolutely necessary for the correct functioning of State institutions. I think that here it is just as harmful to exaggerate «administrating» as it is to exaggerate anything at all. The chief of a State institution must possess a high degree of personal appeal and sufficiently solid scientific and technical knowledge to be able to check people's work. That much is fundamental. Without it, the work cannot be done properly. On the other hand, it is very important that they should be capable of administering and should have a worthy assistant, or assistants, in the matter. The combination of these two qualities in one person will hardly be found, and it is hardly necessary.
#Lenin
#Taken Down by L.F.
#28th of December, 1922
#3
The State Planning Commission is apparently developing in all respects into a commission of experts. Such an institution cannot be headed by anybody except a person with great experience and an all-round scientific education in technology. The administrative element must in essence be subsidiary. A certain independence and autonomy of the State Planning Commission is essential for the prestige of this scientific institution and depends on one thing, namely, the conscientiousness of its workers and their conscientious desire to turn our plan of economic and social development into reality.
This last quality may, of course, be found now only as an exception, for the overwhelming majority of scientists, who naturally make up the Commission, are inevitably infected with bourgeois ideas and bourgeois prejudices. The check on them from this standpoint must be the job of several persons who can form the Presidium of the Commission. These must be Communists to keep a day-to-day check on the extent of the bourgeois scientists' devotion to our cause displayed in the whole course of the work and see that they abandon bourgeois prejudices and gradually adopt the Socialist standpoint. This work along the twin lines of scientific checking and pure administration should be the ideal of those who run the State Planning Commission in our Republic.
#Lenin
#Taken Down by M.V.
#29th of December, 1922
#4
Is it rational to divide the work of the State Planning Commission into separate jobs? Should we not, on the contrary, try to build up a group of permanent specialists who would be systematically checked by the Presidium of the Commission and could solve the whole range of problems within its ambit? I think that the latter would be the more reasonable and that we must try to cut down the number of temporary and urgent tasks.