So, too, with the toleration of private vendors in cities. The advantages of 'socialist' trade would prove decisive, Bukharin maintained, as state stores and co-operatives supplied merchandise at the lowest possible prices - a public service distinct from the inclination ofNepmen to charge as much as the market could bear. Consumers would flock to the 'socialist sector', and private shops would wither for lack of customers. Bukharin did not relish the Nepmen, and he could support taxingthem more heavily than co-operatives. But he rejected the adoption of 'administrative measures' (such as confiscatory taxation, seizure of goods and arrest) to eliminate private economic activity. Were the state to liquidate private traders before it could replace them itself, the result would not be socialism but 'trade deserts', a term used to describe locales where few goods were available.
All of this meant that those inclined to accept NEP indefinitely were also prepared to accept a modest rate of industrial growth. In the Bolshevik mind, rapid industrialisation required (1) a large grain surplus (to feed a mushrooming proletariat and export in exchange for foreign technology) and (2) investment decisions that favoured heavy industry as much as possible. Steel mills, coal mines, hydroelectric projects and machine shops turned out products that could be used to produce still more factories, while light (consumer goods) industry did not. Neither of these things - a massive grain surplus and overwhelming investment in heavy industry - seemed compatible with the New Economic Policy. NEP anticipated the production of a large quantity of consumer goods, enough to turn state stores into successful competitors with urban private entrepreneurs and to stock rural co-operatives sufficiently to win the favour of the peasantry. Not only that, NEP took funds from the state budget (which might otherwise have been devoted to heavy industrial projects) in the form of payments to obtain peasants' surplus grain. Both of these aspects of NEP left the budget with less in the short run for heavy industry, while failing over the years to accumulate a substantial grain reserve for the state. To Bukharin and prominent allies like Rykov and Tomskii, none of this seemed cause for anything more than modifying NEP. The state might raise taxes on the kulaks, they could agree, but it should also offer peasants higher prices for the grain they marketed. Such incentives continued to figure in the strategies of NEP's defenders, for they understood that the primacy of coercion would signal the end of the path taken in 1921.
There were others in the party, however, who favoured a decisive change, and without further delay. For some with this outlook, NEP seemedto threaten cultural contamination from diverse sources, including nightclubs, casinos, jazz and Hollywood films common in the nation's largest cities. Here, capitalist decadence rather than socialist fervour seemed in the offing, and a campaign would soon erupt to generate a proletarian culture suitable for the new society said to be close at hand. But the main thrust of NEP's most formidable Bolshevik opponents took place along the 'industrial front', where critics dismissed Bukharin's course as incompatible with industrialisation at a pace necessary to construct socialism and defend the nation.
Stalin's voice could be heard most clearly in this chorus, revealing that he had lost patience with NEP as a means to provide the state with grain to export in substantial volume. By i928, developments 'on the grain front' indicated that he was parting company with Bukharin and other former allies. The preceding year's harvest had not been poor, but during the last quarter ofi927 the state acquired little more than half the grain it had received during the corresponding period in i926. Peasants were withholding supplies from the market, apparently for a variety of reasons that included the insufficient price offered by the state and the scarcity of manufactured consumer goods. They preferred to sell other crops and animal products for which prices were more favourable, while retaining grain to build up herds of livestock or in anticipation of better prices to come. At any rate, the party faced a problem that Stalin seized to promote stern measures more reminiscent ofWar Communism than NEP. Local officials received instructions to force peasants to 'sell' grain to the state at low prices, and Stalin himself toured Siberia in January-February 1928, ordering administrators to crack down on peasants hoarding grain. Keeping a surplus off the market was legal under NEP, but Stalin described it as a crime ('speculation'), permitting authorities to confiscate the produce in question. Like-minded Bolshevik leaders toured other grain-producing regions, and their efforts helped net the state two-thirds more grain during the first quarter of 1928 than in the same three months of the previous year.
Bolsheviks more devoted to the continuation of NEP were appalled by the coercive nature of the 'extraordinary measures' and by Stalin's remarks in Siberia about pushing forward with sweeping collectivisation. Their criticism prompted Stalin to beat a brief verbal retreat. He rejected talk of NEP's demise and condemned 'excesses' of over-zealous procurement officials here and there. At the same time, he continued to defend his approach to collecting grain, and when shortages reappeared later in the year, he again supported the extraction of 'surpluses' through forced delivery and confiscation. With every month in i928 it grew more fanciful to suppose that anyone could quickly regain the peasants' trust in NEP, which encouraged party members to presume that increased pressure remained the only alternative. This was probably Stalin's intent all along, but the effect of the 'extraordinary measures' in any case tended to steer Bolsheviks towards a conclusion that some form of collectivisation represented the solution to their seemingly chronic difficulty in amassing enough grain for the army, the proletariat and the export market.
Stalin and his new allies dismissed suggestions from Politburo colleagues to obtain more grain by offering the peasants higher prices and additional consumer goods. These options, consistent with NEP, would have drained funds from heavy industry and other portions of the budget. At a Central Committee plenum in July 1928, Stalin bluntly defended the maintenance of prices unfavourable to peasants in order to extract 'tribute' to support industrialisation. The government's recent difficulties in collecting grain stemmed not from misguided prices, he explained, but from class struggle spearheaded by the kulaks, whose opposition had to be vanquished. Nor was the Stalinist faction prepared to 'coddle' the Nepmen much longer. Private entrepreneurs had no place in socialism, and if socialism was now proclaimed to be close at hand, the Nepmen must leave the scene in short order. For this to happen in harmony with NEP, the party would have to invest far more in the production of consumer goods and a network of state stores (again, at the expense of heavy industry). With such a course unacceptable to Stalin and his supporters, it soon became clear that 'administrative measures' rather than economic competition would be the road taken to liquidate the 'new bourgeoisie'.