Throughout my presentation, I have focused exclusively on the economic process and its logical development, so to speak. In doing so, I have deliberately excluded almost all other factors that not only influence economic development but are also capable of diverting it in a different direction. Such a one-sided economic approach is methodologically correct and inevitable, since we are dealing with a long-term assessment of a highly complex process spanning many years. Practical decisions of the moment have to be made each time, taking into account all the factors as they intersect today. But when it comes to the prospects for economic development over an entire era, it is inevitable to be diverted from “superstructural” factors, i.e., first and foremost, the factor of politics. War, for example, could have a decisive influence on development in one direction, while a victorious European revolution in another. And it is not only events coming from outside. Internal economic processes produce their own complex political reflection, which, in turn, can become a factor of the utmost importance. The economic stratification of the countryside, as we have shown, while it by no means poses any immediate economic threats, i.e., the rapid growth of capitalist tendencies at the expense of socialist ones, may nevertheless, under certain conditions, give rise to political tendencies hostile to socialist development.

Political conditions, both domestic and international, present a complex intertwining of issues that require separate analysis each time, naturally, in close connection with the economy. This analysis was not part of our investigation. To point out the basic tendencies in the development of the economic base does not, of course, mean obtaining a ready-made key to all changes in the political superstructure, which has its own internal logic, its own tasks, and its own difficulties. A forward-looking economic orientation does not replace a political one, but only facilitates it. 

Thus, in the course of our analysis, we deliberately left aside the question: how long will the capitalist order exist? How will it change and in what direction will it develop? Several variants are conceivable here. We are not going to explore them in these concluding lines; it is enough simply to name them. Perhaps we will be able to return to them in another context.

The question of the victory of socialism is most easily resolved by assuming that a proletarian revolution will unfold in Europe in the coming years. This “variant” is by no means the least probable. But from the point of view of a socialist prognosis, there is no question about it. It is clear that, given the combination of the economies of the Soviet Union and Soviet Europe, the question of the comparative coefficients of socialist and capitalist production would be resolved victoriously, regardless of any resistance from America. And it is permissible to doubt how long this resistance would last.

The question becomes extremely complicated if we tentatively assume that the capitalist world around us will continue to exist for several decades. However, such an assumption will remain completely meaningless unless we concretize it with a number of other assumptions. What will happen in this scenario to the European proletariat, and then to the American proletariat? What will happen to the productive forces of capitalism? If the decades we have tentatively assumed are decades of violent ebbs and flows, cruel civil war, economic stagnation, and even decline, i.e., simply a protracted process of the birth pangs of socialism, then it is clear that our economy will gain the upper hand during the transition period thanks to the incomparably greater stability of our social foundations alone. 

If we assume that a new dynamic equilibrium will be established on the world market in the coming decades, something like the expanded reproduction of the period that unfolded between 1871 and 1914, then the whole question will appear to us in a completely different light. The prerequisite for this supposed “equilibrium” would be a new period of flourishing productive forces, for the comparative “peacefulness” of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and the opportunist degeneration of social democracy and the trade unions in the decades preceding the war were made possible only by the powerful rise of industry. It is quite obvious that if the impossible became possible; if the improbable became real; if world capitalism, and European capitalism in particular, found a new dynamic equilibrium not for its shaky governmental combinations, but for its productive forces; if capitalist production were to make a new powerful ascent in the coming years and decades, it would mean that we, the socialist state, although we are about to switch and even are switching from a freight train to a passenger train, would have to catch up with an express train. 

Simply put, this would mean that we were wrong in our basic historical assessments. It would mean that capitalism has not exhausted its historical “mission” and that the unfolding imperialist phase is not at all a phase of capitalism's decline, convulsions, and decay, but merely a prerequisite for its new dawn. It is quite obvious that, in the conditions of a new, long-term European and global capitalist revival, socialism in a backward country would face immense dangers. What kind? In the form of a new war, which even the European proletariat, pacified by the upswing, would be unable to prevent this time—a war in which the enemy would have a colossal technological advantage over us? In the form of a flood of capitalist goods—incomparably better and cheaper than ours—goods that could destroy the monopoly of foreign trade and, subsequently, other foundations of the socialist economy? Essentially, this is already a question of secondary importance. But it is quite clear to Marxists that socialism in a backward country would be hard pressed if capitalism had a chance not only to linger, but also to develop productive forces in the advanced countries over many years.

However, there are absolutely no reasonable grounds for assuming such a scenario, and it would therefore be senseless to first develop a fantastically “optimistic” outlook for the capitalist world and then rack one's brains over how to find a way out of it. The European and the world economic system currently present such a jumble of contradictions,—which do not push development forward, but rather undermine it at every step—that history will provide us with enough opportunities in the coming years to gain economic momentum, if we use all the resources of our own and the global economy as we should. And we intend to do so. Meanwhile, in parallel, albeit with delays and setbacks, European development will shift the “coefficient” of political power toward the revolutionary proletariat. In general, it must be assumed that the historical balance sheet will be more than satisfactory for us.