Abstract
In discussing the global economy and the evolution of a global manufacturing system. I have assumed that each ‘national’ unit is encompassed by the system, though the extent of their active inclusion within it clearly varies. In the ‘post-communist’ era, this may appear relatively uncontroversial. The beginnings of globalization, however, predate the East European/Soviet revolutions of 1989–91 by at least two decades. They were inexorably drawing the ‘socialist economies’ further and further back into the world market throughout the period. In fact, even at their most autarkic, their actions were circumscribed by the global system though their relationship to that system was an extremely distorted one. If this can be demonstrated, then the conclusions I have reached regarding the weakening of the economic role of the national state in the face of the global economy and the increasing disaggregation of state and capital can equally (and perhaps more forcefully) be applied to the Eastern bloc.
No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.
Karl Marx, ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 21
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Notes
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978, p. 703.
Paresh Chattopadhyay, ‘Neither Liberalization nor Statist Regime’, Bulleting of Concerned Asian Scholars, 27 (4), 1995, pp. 53–6
Kiren A. Chaudhry, ‘The Myths of the Market and the Common History of the Late Developers’, Politics and Society, 21 (3), September 1993, pp. 245–74 at p. 250–1; W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth, p. 163.
See Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, Harvard University Press, 1966, especially chapter 1.
See Graeme Gill, ‘Russian State-Building and the Problems of Geo-Politics’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 37 (1), 1996, pp. 77–103 at pp. 87–8. According to a US representative in 1904, ‘The Russian state is itself the biggest landowner, capitalist and entrepreneur in the world’ (US Department of Commerce quoted in Ruth A. Roosa, ‘Russian Industrialists and “State Socialism”, 1906–17’, Soviet Studies, 23, January 1972, pp. 395–417 at p. 397).
Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, New York: Pathfinder, 1970, p. 247.
See Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia, London: Bookmarks, 1988, pp. 212–14; 220–1.
Chris Harman, Explaining the Crisis: a Marxist Reappraisal, London: Bookmarks, 1987, p. 63.
B. P. Kurashvili, ‘Restructuring the Enterprise’, Problems of Economics, 31 (5), September 1988, pp. 23–46 at p. 36.
P. Bunich, ‘Tsentralizovannoe upravlenie i samostoyatel’nost proizvodstvennikh kollektikov’, Voprosy ekonomiki, No. 9, September 1985, pp. 48–58 at p. 49.
See Georges Haupt, Socialism and the Great War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 147.
See V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970.
Nikolai Bukharin, Selected Writings on the State and the Transition to Socialism, Nottingham: Spokesman, 1982, p. 51.
V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Volume 2, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970, p. 269. Lenin regarded German state capitalism (i.e. the war economy) as ‘the “last word” in contemporary large capital technique and planned organisation’ (see E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, Volume 2, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, p. 98).
Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917–1991, London: Penguin, 1992, chapter 1, pp. 1–20.
R. W. Davies et al. (eds.), The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 1–2.
Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, London: Pluto Press, 1979, pp. 31–3.
Solomon Schwarz, The Russian Revolution of 1905, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, p. 6.
Robert H. McNeal (ed.), Resolutions and Decisions of the CPSU, Volume 1, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974, p. 42.
Karl Marx, ‘Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality’, Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Volume 6, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976, p. 319.
Engels on the English revolution: ‘Socialism, Utopian and Scientific’ in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970, pp. 385–5.
Ibid., p. 14. The crucial role of the soldiers in the revolution is noted disapprovingly by the Menshevik participant and historian Raphael Abramovitch in The Soviet Revolution, 1917–1939, Allen & Unwin 1962, pp. 88–9. The militarization of Soviet civilian life is covered by Mark Von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990, pp. 240–52.
J. V. Stalin, ‘The Political Situation of the Republic’, Works, Volume 9, Moscow: FLPH, 1953, p. 388. Stalin, it is generally agreed, was no trailblazer in matters of theory. It is most unlikely that he would have expressed these ideas unless they represented at the very least a partial consensus amongst the Party leadership.
I. B. Berkhin, ‘Tak chto zhe takoe “Voeenyi Kommunizm”?’, Istoriya SSSR, No. 3, May –June 1990, pp. 131–42.
See V. P. Buldakov and V. V. Kabanov, ‘“War Communism”: Ideology and Social Development’, Russian Studies in History, Summer 1994, pp. 27–51 at p. 28.
Lenin, ‘From the Destruction of the Old Social System to the Creation of the New’, Collected Works, Volume 30, p. 517; Osinsky quoted in Bertrand M. Patenaude, ‘Peasants into Russians’, The Russian Review, 53, October 1994, pp. 552–70 at pp. 562–5;Trotsky (and Lenin) on labour militarization, see Cliff, Trotsky, Volume 2, London: Bookmarks, 1990, pp. 164–9.
Israel Getzler, Martov, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1967, p. 172.
See Nove, Economic History, pp. 108–9, 110–14; Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin, New York: Monad Press, 1980, pp. 38–42.
See Nikolai Bukharin, ‘Concerning the New Economic Policy and our Tasks’, Selected Writings on the State and the Transition to Socialism, Nottingham: Spokesman, 1982, pp. 183–208.
Paul R. Gregory and Robert C. Stuart, Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, New York: Harper & Row, 1986, pp. 64–5
R. W. Davies: The Socialist Offensive, Houndmills: Macmillan, 1989, pp. 39–41.
Mark Von Hagen, Soldiers, pp. 166–8; Anne E. Gorsuch, ‘NEP Be Damned!’, The Russian Review, 56, October 1997, pp. 564–80.
J. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1945, p. 356. See also the CPSU Congress decision to prioritize ‘Those branches of heavy industry… which in the shortest time strengthen the economic might and defence capacity of the USSR…’ (Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Volume 2, Toronto, 1974, p. 322).
Peter Binns, ‘The Theory of State Capitalism’, pp. 73–98 in Peter Binns et al., Russia: From Workers’ State to State Capitalism, London: Bookmarks, 1987, at pp. 88–9; Buick and Crump, State Capitalism, pp. 51–2.
Boris Kagarlitsky, The Dialectic of Change, London: Verso, 1990, p. 79.
V. I. Lenin, ‘Better Fewer, But Better’ in Selected Works, Volume 3, Moscow: Progress Press, 1971, pp. 779, 783. See also Collected Works, Volume 32, Moscow: Progress Press, 1963–1970, p. 388.
Ed A. Hewett, Reforming the Soviet Economy, Washington: Brookings Institution, 1988, p. 163
Barrington Moore Jnr, Terror and Progress — USSR, New York: Harper & Row, 1954 p. 34
Paul R. Gregory, Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 123.
David Granick, The Red Executive: a Study of the Organization Man in Russian Industry, London: Macmillan, 1960, p. 188. See also Simon Clarke, ‘The Politburo and the military determined the set of use-values demanded as the surplus…’ (Clarke, Workers, p. 15). Alec Nove suggests that the elite was broader — that it was ‘co-extensive with the holders of all positions on the [Central Committee’s?] nomenklatura’ (a list of higher positions that needed the CC’s approval) — see ‘History, Hierarchy and Nationalities’, Soviet Studies, 21 (1), July 1969, pp. 71–92 at p. 92. However, it is generally agreed that while the nomenklatura listed the most important positions and those that occupied them, the vetting and approval of those appointed was in the hands of the Party leadership itself. In other words, it was not the list that was in control; it was those that controlled the list. It was not the three million or so nomenklaturists that controlled the means of production in the Soviet Union; it was those that controlled them — the Party leadership itself.
See Djilas, New Class, p. 45; Alvin Gouldner cited in Alec Nove, ‘The Class Nature of the Soviet Union Revisited’, Soviet Studies, 35 (3), July 1983, pp. 298–312 at p. 301; Kuron and Modzelewski, Open Letter, p. 16; and Nove himself (‘… this ruling stratum has some of the characteristics of a ruling class, though not that of ownership, except possibly in some collective sense…’)— ‘Is There a Ruling Class in the USSR’, pp. 588–604 in Anthony Giddens and David Held (eds.), Classes, Power and Conflict, Houndmills: Macmillan, 1982, at p. 601.
Michael Voslensky, Nomenklatura: the Soviet Ruling Class, New York: Doubleday, 1984, p. 120.
Nove, ‘Is There a Ruling Class?’, p. 598; David Laibman, ‘The “State Capitalist” and “Bureaucratic-Exploitative” Interpretations of the Soviet Social Formation: a Critique’, Review of Radical Political Economics, 10 (4), Winter 1978, pp. 24–34 at p. 30.
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© 2000 David Lockwood
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Lockwood, D. (2000). The Soviet State and its Rulers. In: The Destruction of the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333981566_4
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