Writing of War Communism a contemporary historian aptly referred to the period as the ‘heroic’ phase of the Russian revolution. With the advent of the NEP the reckless experimentalism of 1920 quickly gave way to less bizarre if no less imaginative visions of the Soviet future. The military threat receded further into the past, and the pre-eminence of the War Department ended. The search for an escape from Russia's cul-de-sac resulted in a far-reaching reappraisal of the country's domestic as well as its international position.

Adjusting slowly to the changed intellectual and political climate Trotsky found himself out of his element. The decline in his personal influence began even before the crisis in the transport industry and thereafter became steadily more pronounced. The various projected alternatives to labour mobilization all implied the need to reintegrate Russia into the world economy. Pressured by issues and events, Trotsky modified his theory of imperialism. But even his revised estimate of developments in Europe precluded the likelihood of external aid. His reluctance to endorse the new integrationist panaceas subsequently gave rise to an unexpected political rivalry which strongly influenced the entire history of the early 1920s.

The substitution of capital for labour

Besides the immediate political objections to labour mobilization Trotsky's policies were fundamentally at odds with long-established Marxist traditions. In Capital, his major economic treatise, Marx had invariably attributed economic growth to capital accumulation and technological innovation.