初期ネップ下の提言にみるブルツクスの経済発展観

抄録

Boris Brutzkus is well-known for his pioneering and penetrating criticism against the Socialist economy. However, relatively less known is the fact that he defended the social role of government to protect the interest of the people. The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct and appreciate his vision of economic development underlying such a unique standpoint.
For this purpose Brutzkus's following two important contributions will be investigated: i) his report “Economic Precondition for the Reconstruction of Agriculture” made at the All Russian Congress of Agronomists held in March 1922; ii) his paper “Agrarian Overpopulation and Agrarian Institution” published in the organ of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture in June/July 1922. Both of them include profound insight into the causes of catastrophic destruction of Russian agriculture after the October Revolution as well as several important policy proposals for its restoration.
Brutzkus attributes the root cause of agrarian catastrophe to the “black redistribution” and emphasizes that it is not only the Soviet government but also all of the intellectuals and the people who must free themselves from the illusionary idea that the agrarian problem can be solved by nationwide land redistribution. Fully recognizing the limits of NEP as partial liberalization under the Communist dictatorship, he supports the basic direction of NEP for the reason that it serves the interest of Russian national economy.
In his schema of national economy, the dynamic agro-industrial linkage, especially the smooth flow of labor from agriculture to urban industry constitutes one of the essential factors in the process of economic development. Coupled with slowness of industrialization, Russian land community hindered this flow of population and became the hotbed of agrarian overpopulation. Agrarian policies and agrarian institutions must be favorable for such a flow and at the same time soften the pain attendant on it. From this follows the necessity of guaranteeing peasants the right to dispose of their land freely. Owing to some fundamental differences between agriculture and industry, this right brings not the victory of agrarian capitalism but promotes the growth of peasant economies and their adaptation to the market environment.
For Brutzkus, the national economy is a huge social framework giving its members economic and cultural wealth that they cannot produce alone. Flowering of individual freedom needs development of the national economy. The reason he affirms capitalism and rejects Marxian Socialism is that he firmly believes that the development of national economy in the industrialization era is possible only under capitalism and that individual freedom is inseparable from the private ownership of the means of production. However, as is shown in his argument of the relative advantage of peasant economy in agriculture, dominance of capitalism is neither exclusive nor unconditional even in the market. His vision of the desirable national economy can be characterized by it compositeness and variety created by the mixture both of capitalist institutions playing the leading part and of various kinds of non-capitalist institutions playing secondary but often essential roles.
The above-described Brutzkus's vision is highly suggestive in its rare combination of economic logic and due attention to historical factors. Understanding of this vision will be of considerable help in an in-depth appraisal of his critical analysis on the Soviet economy.