Why Lenin failed to implement Marx’s concept of socialism: an accounting history of the Russian revolution, c.1917–1924

ABSTRACT To orthodox Marxists socialism means central planning. Capitalist accounting is, however, integral to Marx’s socialism that envisages universal worker co-operatives, initially accountable to workers and society for value, but with the interim aim of increasing the ‘productive forces’ to make every labour hour ‘directly’ of equal social value. This study tests the implication that implementing Marx’s socialism requires understanding capitalist accounting by examining its role in the Russian revolution. Lenin failed, it argues, because he did not understand capitalist accounting, Marx’s explanation of it, or his interim aim. Lenin stressed accounting’s centrality, but equated it with budgeting, and confused Marx’s interim aim with Day 1, which led him to support ‘centralisation’ and ‘workers’ control’. Lenin admitted a ‘mistake’ in 1921 when he had understood, apparently intuitively, the necessity of accountability for profit, which underlay his ‘New Economic Policy’, the reintroduction of double-entry bookkeeping in 1922, and his 1923 vision of socialism built from co-operatives. Lenin failed to overcome his comrades’ orthodoxy, and after his death in 1924 Stalin dropped his ideas, which the study hypothesises had important implications for twentieth-century geopolitical history.