Stalin: The collective method proved to be an exceedingly progressive method

In a speech to the Russian people on February 9th, 1946, Joseph Stalin explained the following:

Secondly, by the policy of collectivizing agriculture.

To put an end to our backwardness in agriculture and to provide the country with the largest possible amount of market grain, cotton, and so forth, it was necessary to pass from small peasant farming to large-scale farming, for only large-scale farming can employ modern machinery, utilize all the achievements of agricultural science and provide the largest possible quantity of market produce. But there are two kinds of large-scale farming -- capitalist and collective. The Communist Party could not take the capitalist path of developing agriculture not only on grounds of principle, but also because that path presupposes an exceedingly long process of development and requires the preliminary ruination of the peasants and their transformation into agricultural labourers. The Communist Party therefore took the path of collectivizing agriculture, the path of organizing large farms by uniting the peasant farms into collective farm's. The collective method proved to be an exceedingly progressive method not only because it did not call for the ruination of the peasants, but also, and particularly, because it enabled us in the course of several years to cover the entire country with large collective farms capable of employing modern machinery, of utilizing all the achievements of agricultural science and of providing the country with the largest possible quantity of market produce.

There is no doubt that without the policy of collectivization we would not have been able to put an end to the age-long backwardness of our agriculture in so short a time.

It cannot be said that the Party's policy met with no resistance. Not only backward people, who always shrink from everything new, but even many prominent members of the Party persistently tried to pull our Party back, and by every possible means tried to drag it onto the "ordinary" capitalist path of development. All the anti-Party machinations of the trotskyites and of the Rights, all their "activities" in sabotaging the measures of our Government, pursued the one object of frustrating the Party's policy and of hindering industrialization and collectivization. But the Party yielded neither to the threats of some nor to the howling of others and confidently marched forward in spite of everything. It is to the Party's credit that it did not adjust itself to the backward, that it was not afraid to swim against the stream, and that all the time it held on to its position of the leading force. There can be no doubt that if the Communist Party had not displayed this staunchness and perseverance it would have been unable to uphold the policy of industrializing the country and of collectivizing agriculture.

Everything they do, no matter how many lives it destroys or people it kills, gets labeled as "progress", "forward", or "new ideas". Despite the fact that all of these collective methods are as old as human history. The The Pilgrims gave collectivization a shot. It failed miserably. Other "progressive" ideas such as wealth redistribution are also very old ideas, having been implemented by tyrants for as long as time can remember. The death of truth is an important stage on the road to serfdom.

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