Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relative capacities of various economic agents. It was argued in Chapter 1 that a theory of the class structure could only demarcate the boundaries between economic agents on the basis of specifying important differences in their capacities for action, deriving from their relation to the means of production. Thus the relations of production, i.e. the relations operating between economic agents deriving from their differential access to the means of production, must be examined in some detail if one is to have adequate grounds for either claiming or denying that class relations exist. The relations between the agents concerned need not be exclusively interpersonal relations; indeed, they cannot be exclusively interpersonal if some of the economic agents are collective agents. If a monastic order can be a feudal landowner, or a joint-stock company can be a capitalist, then a theory of the relations of production which restricts itself to relations between human agents runs the risk of missing vital aspects of the social formation in question.
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Notes
See, for example, N. Jasny, The Socialised Agriculture of the USSR: Plans and Performance, Stanford University Press, 1949;
and A. Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, Allen Lane, London, 1969.
For a detailed discussion of developments between 1953 and 1964, see K. E. Wadekin, The Private Sector in Soviet Agriculture, University of California Press, 1973, chs 8, 9.
R. C. Stuart, The Collective Farm in Soviet Agriculture, D. C. Heath & Co., Lexington, Mass., 1972, ch. 4 ‘Structural Change in the Kolkhoz Sector’.
Lavigne, using different sources from Stuart, gives a figure of 123 700 for 1950, as can be seen from Table 3.1, taken from M. Lavigne, Les Economies Socialistes: soviétique et européennes, Armand Colin, Paris, 1979, p. 155.
A. Nove, The Soviet Economic System, Allen & Unwin, London, 1977, pp. 131–7.
See M. Lavigne, ‘The Creation of Money by the State Bank in the USSR’, Economy and Society, vol. 7, no. 1, February 1978.
For a discussion of the rationalist conception of planning, see G. Littlejohn, ‘Economic Calculation in the Soviet Union’, Economy and Society, vol. 9, no. 4, November 1980.
The concept of ‘the rationalist conception of planning’ is based on the analysis of the rationalist conception of action provided by B. Hindess, ‘Humanism and Teleology in Sociological Theory’, in B. Hindess (ed.), Sociological Theories of the Economy, Macmillan, London, 1977.
W. Andreff, ‘Capitalism d’état ou monopolisme d’état? Propos d’étape’, in M. Lavigne (ed.), Economie politique de la planification en système socialiste, Economica, Paris, 1978.
C. Bettelheim, Economie Calculation and Forms of Property, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1976.
R. Tartarin, ‘Planification et régulation dans les économies socialistes: pour une théorie de la valeur comptable’, Revue d’Etudes Est-Ouest, no. 2, 1981.
One could add that a similar discursive presence is evident in sociological organisation theory for similar reasons: see, for example, A. Etzioni, Modern Organizations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964, ch. 3.
See A. Nove, ‘Soviet Economics and Soviet Economists: Some Random Observations’, paper given to the Panel on the Theory of Economic Planning and Regulation in the Socialist System, Second World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Garmisch, 1980.
François Seurot, ‘Salaires et productivité en URSS: la réforme de 1979’, paper given to the Groupe de Récherche sur la Théorie de l’Economie Socialiste, Centre d’Economie Internationale des Pays Socialistes, Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 24 October 1980.
For an excellent assessment of the use of brigades in raising productivity, in relation to the 1979 wage reform, see M. Drach, ‘La brigade sous contrat dans l’industrie soviétique et la réforme de juillet 1979’, paper read to the Groupe de Récherche sur la Théorie de l’Economie Socialiste, Centre d’Economie Internationale des Pays Socialistes, Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 24 October 1980.
Abrief account of this in English can be found in G. Littlejohn, ‘Class Structure and Production Relations in the USSR’, unpublished thesis, University of Glasgow, 1981.
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© 1984 Gary Littlejohn
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Littlejohn, G. (1984). Economic Units and Economic Calculation: The Basis of Production Relations. In: A Sociology of the Soviet Union. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17358-7_4
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