Non-Capitalist Path of Development

Origins in theory

The starting point of the non-capitalist path is the report and theses on the national and colonial questions at the Second Congress of the Comintern in July 1920. Lenin analysed that imperialism had divided the world and held more than a billion people in colonial subjection, and linked the revolutionary movements of oppressed nations to international communism. The terms of admission set by the same congress obliged Comintern member parties to give direct aid to revolutionary movements in the colonies and among oppressed nations.

State-led modernization as its character

During the Cold War the line was formalized as an alternative development path the Soviet Union promoted for newly independent countries. The aim was modernization that neither fully embraced capitalism nor immediately transitioned to socialism, and state-led modernization from above was prioritized over popular uprisings or grassroots socialist revolutions. In countries where the communist party was not in power this took the form of alliances with ruling elites and national governments, and there is a critical assessment that the Soviets cooperated even with regimes that had imprisoned and tortured local communist activists. Under Stalin, Soviet foreign policy held that working-class revolution should be discouraged where it appeared premature in the face of imperialism, and that newly independent states should ally with 'national capitalists' to carry out state-led industrialization and agrarian reform first.

Application in Mongolia

In November 1921 Lenin advised a delegation of the Mongolian People's Party visiting Moscow that it was possible and necessary for the Mongolian People's Republic to follow a non-capitalist path, setting as conditions hard work by the party and government, the growth of the number of cooperatives, the introduction of new forms of economic activity and national culture, and the rallying of the Arats behind the party and government, and he argued against 'transforming' the party into a communist party, saying that 'a mere change of signboards is harmful and dangerous'. The Mongolian People's Party had been founded in June 1920 as a pluralist anti-colonial organization that included Arats, Lamas and even nobles, and the revolution of 1921 and Comintern support split it into left and right; in this period the national question overshadowed the social question.

In the 1920s the party and government abolished the aristocracy's feudal privileges and built a state-guided economy resting on cooperatives and trade with the Soviet Union. A national bank (a joint venture with the USSR), a new currency, a postal system and a state trading company followed, and the 1924 constitution established 'Khurals' as organs of people's power. By 1928 external trade with the USSR accounted for 15 percent of imports and 20 percent of exports, and large-scale economic development aid comparable to Lenin's conception of 1920 was not yet provided.

The chronology of money and banking is disputed. The Wikipedia article on the MPR records that the national Bank of Mongolia (the Mongolian Trade and Industry Bank) was founded in June 1924, began issuing its own currency, the tugrik, in silver coins in December 1925, and became the sole legal currency in 1928. A US Library of Congress account does not separate the founding of the joint bank in 1924 from the issuance of currency, whereas the official history of the Bank of Mongolia distinguishes the founding of the bank (1924) from the creation of the tugrik.

After the Bogd Khan died in 1924 the Marxists in the party gained the upper hand. The search for a new incarnation was forbidden, and at its Third Party Congress the party declared a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the labouring Arats under the name of the Mongolian People's Republic and a path of 'non-capitalist development', renamed itself the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and joined the Comintern. The dates of the congress differ by source: a US Library of Congress account gives 4-24 August 1924, while a Mongolian account gives 4-31 August. The same Mongolian account adds that Danzan and Bavasan were arrested within twenty-four hours and executed at Sharhad on the outskirts of Huree, and that the Soviet plenipotentiary Vasilev made a speech at the congress defending the execution.

When the line was fixed in documents, however, differs by source. A Mongolian account records that the congress adopted a decision that 'the ultimate goal of the MPRP is to achieve communism, and Mongolia will bypass the capitalist stage of development', while a US Library of Congress country study records that policies confirming the non-capitalist line were ratified by the Fifth National Great Hural in December 1928. An account in the same series describes the Third Party Congress as purging 'useless elements', renaming the party and ending in Danzan's execution, without connecting it to a non-capitalist declaration.

The statement that the Fourth Party Congress of 1925 fixed scientific socialism as its guiding ideology and adopted a programme advancing the democratic revolution along non-capitalist lines rests on a single source in the IFDDR series and requires attribution. The Wikipedia article on the MPR instead records that the Fifth Congress in 1926 called for the restriction and nationalization of private property, which conflicts with that claim.

The line's shifts and reversal

At the Seventh Party Congress in 1928 the left won a majority on the Central Committee and, on Comintern advice, turned to strengthening poor and middle Arats, reducing the power of the wealthy, destroying the feudal and monastic economic power and accelerating industrialization. The property of some 700 nobles was confiscated, and land nationalization, the nationalization of transport and retail trade and a foreign trade monopoly were carried out. By the late 1930s the economic and social power of the feudal class had been destroyed, monastic property had been confiscated in full, and the share of foreign firms, which had controlled over 60 percent of exports in 1926, had fallen to 14.5 percent in 1929.

In 1932, after the anticommunist and counter-revolutionary uprisings in western Mongolia, the Comintern and the Soviet Communist Party directed the party Central Committee to reject its prior policy as 'leftist deviation' and drop the collective-farm experiment. Choybalsan stated that 'the overall development of our country has not yet entered the stage of socialism, and also it is wrong to copy Soviet experience in every single thing.' This is described as a return to the 'general line' set out at the Third Party Congress in 1924, a 'new turn' (shine ergelt). A party plenary session concluded that too many cadres had believed an 'immediate transition to socialism' was possible and had 'mechanically copied the methods of socialist construction that had been applied in the USSR'; agricultural communes were dismantled and the private initiatives of the Arats were encouraged again. The failure of forced collectivization and the 1932 revolt against confiscations nonetheless cost some seven million head of livestock, slaughtered over three years.

Mongolia's particularity lay in having circumvented the capitalist stage of development entirely, unlike the Eastern European people's democracies and, to an extent, Soviet Russia. The Tenth Party Congress of 1940 declared the tasks of the second party programme of 1925 achieved, the general democratic phase complete, and the path of non-capitalist development no longer reversible, and adopted a third programme. The second constitution, adopted by the eighth Great Khural that year (June-July 1940), was closely modelled on the 1936 Soviet constitution and proclaimed a state of herdsmen, workers and intelligentsia taking a non-capitalist road of development for the future transition to socialism. It added clauses depriving counter-revolutionaries of the vote, and declared the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party the vanguard of the working people and core of all their organizations.

The third constitution, adopted after a nationwide debate in 1960, reflected the completion of the non-capitalist path. The Wikipedia article on the MPR identifies the adopting body as the fourth Great Khural of July 1960, while the IFDDR series gives only the year. The constitution defined the People's Republic as 'a socialist state of the workers, the cooperatively organized Arats, and the working intelligentsia', and declared the MPRP the guiding and directing force of society and the state. The Thirteenth Party Congress of 1958 had concluded that Mongolia had 'been transformed from a purely cattle-breeding country into an agro-industrialised state'. Mongolia became the first country outside Europe to join Comecon in 1962, trade with the socialist bloc accounted for 94 percent of exports and 76 percent of imports in 1960, and industrial production per capita rose by 240 percent over the third and fourth five-year plans of 1962-1972. The Mongolian working class grew from 14,800 in 1940 to 74,200 in 1959, the share of the population working in agriculture fell from 90 percent in 1940 to 60 percent in 1960, and urban residents passed 40 percent by 1963.

The periodization of the MPRP's revolutionary era differs by source. The IFDDR series divides it into a 'general democratic phase' 1921-1940, 'construction of socialism' 1940-1960 and 'integration into the Comecon' 1960-1990, while another part of the same source also labels the general democratic phase 1921-1928. The US Library of Congress series divides economic development into 'general democratic reconstruction' 1921-1939, 'construction of the foundations of socialism' 1940-1960 and 'completion of the material and technical base of socialism' from 1961.

Its relation to repression

The implementation of this line was not separate from repression. A US Library of Congress series records that more than 27,000 people (about 3 percent of the population) died in the purges and factional fighting between leftists and rightists in the 1920s and 1930s, while another account in the same series states that tens of thousands of aristocrats and lamas were killed after 1921; the two figures cover different victim groups and cannot simply be added together. Bodoo and some forty others were arrested in August 1922 on charges of 'counterrevolutionary activities' and of wanting to restore an unlimited monarchy, and Bodoo and fourteen of them were executed. Danzan was executed during the Third Party Congress of 1924 as a 'capitalist' or on charges of 'bourgeois tendencies'; the circumstances, charges and timing of the two deaths differ. The Stalinist purges of 1937-39 executed an estimated 20,000 to 35,000 Mongols in Mongolia and the USSR and killed an estimated 17,000 monks, in a campaign organized by Khorloogiin Choibalsan, minister of internal affairs and commander-in-chief, and NKVD officials. Prime Ministers such as Genden and Amar were shot in Moscow in 1937 and 1941, and from March 1939 Choibalsan led a Stalinist dictatorship.

Re-emergence in the 1960s-70s and the line's end

Mongolia's experience was revisited in the 1960s and 1970s by Marxist-Leninist development theorists as a model for the former colonies of Africa and Asia. At the centre of the 'non-capitalist development' debate over newly independent states was whether economies and social structures deformed by colonial rule could, like Mongolia, circumvent capitalism and advance towards socialism. As 17 African countries became independent in the 'year of Africa' in 1960 this discussion widened, and anti-imperialist new states such as Egypt, Mali, Guinea and Ghana were named as potential cases; within the socialist camp, one strand saw the Mongolian experience as a 'basic model' for all countries to follow and another as inapplicable to new states, and by the late 1960s these were resolved into an analysis holding that policies and speeds must vary with national conditions.

After Stalin's death in 1953, Soviet foreign policy promoted peaceful coexistence and gradual development and greatly expanded aid. From 1954 to 1979 the USSR provided an estimated $18 billion in economic aid and $47 billion in military aid to 76 countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America in support of this model. India under Nehru (1947-1964) and Egypt under Nasser (1956-1970) are cited as prominent examples, with the Bhilai Steel Plant and the Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, given as symbolic cooperative projects. Both cases are tied to state-led industrialization, a mixed economy and nationalization, and the Aswan High Dam also produced environmental and social problems, including the displacement of the Nubian community.

Under Brezhnev, however, Soviet enthusiasm waned from the late 1960s, and maintaining geopolitical influence was prioritized over ideological transformation. Economic stagnation, the priority given to military aid (in Angola and Ethiopia, for example) and disillusionment as recipient states failed to move towards socialism and instead strengthened nationalist or authoritarian regimes are given as causes. The use of Soviet aid to bolster such regimes, delays and overruns in aid projects, and the limiting of large-scale aid in the 1970s by Soviet economic stagnation are also noted as limitations.

The operation of Mongolia's non-capitalist development line closes with the end of the socialist state. Demonstrations in December 1989, anti-MPRP rallies and the resignation of the party leadership in January-March 1990, the amendment of the constitution in May 1990 to remove the party's leading role and legalize opposition parties, and the approval of a market transition were followed by a new constitution adopted in January 1992 and entering into force in February, which ended the socialist republic. With the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the source of an alternative model to neoliberal capitalism disappeared as well.