Restoration Of Capitalism Research Articles

Социалистическое государство и коммунизм: к вопросу об исторической возможности будущего

The article articulates the search for conceptually productive conjugations of the concepts of the socialist state and communist society in the context of the “history of the future”. The reasoning develops from the correlation of the fundamental provisions of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the withering away of the state under communism and the Soviet experience of state-building. At the same time, the main plot is built around the question of the ways and mechanisms of the transition of state socialism to “stateless” communism. The classical considerations on this issue are too strategic for practically significant social forecasts. Soviet socialism, on its “applied” side, left the question of “final” communism open. And now we can talk about the heuristic potential and logical consistency of the interpretation of the Soviet period of national history as a preparatory (and incomplete) stage in the development of a classless form of society. Despite the fact that the desired trend of denationalization, as the main visible sign of approaching communism, is practically nowhere visible throughout the Soviet project. And the collapse of the USSR completely received the opposite completely official qualification of capitalist restoration. The uncontested nature of communism as a result of the development of productive forces. By itself, it does not exclude a variety of ways of his concrete historical “coming”. Moreover, the Soviet version of the socialist state did not meet the expectations associated with it. And not only for external reasons. The impossibility of manually synchronizing the objective and subjective prerequisites of the new society programmed the socialist transformations into aberrations that turned the Soviet state from a direct, that is, the shortest, road to a bright future into a historical dead end. Although this does not imply the possibility of other, so to speak, detour options. But their search is definitely impossible without the historical identification of modernity and clarifying its relationship with the future on this basis.

The Postwar Fight Against Fascism: Auschwitz Memory in Leftist Activism

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the memory activism of three survivors of the Auschwitz resistance and explores the ways in which they linked fascism and genocide to economic exploitation. By doing so, our paper excavates a leftist-antifascist paradigm of postwar memory that waned with the advent of contemporary Holocaust culture. We analyse the memoirs of Oszkár Betlen, Bruno Baum, and Hermann Langbein, members of the international communist movement before, during, and after the Second World War. For these authors, calls to remember Auschwitz were inseparable from a struggle for social change in the present, and their memory practice was never restricted to writing. Therefore, our paper places their memoirs into the wider context of their political-organizational work, and shows that their efforts to commemorate Auschwitz responded to some pressing issues of their time, including the re-militarization and NATO-membership of the Federal Republic, reparations, amnesty and reintegration of former Nazis, and war crimes trials. Importantly, all these issues were intertwined with what they regarded as capitalist restoration and a looming resurgence of fascism. Our paper argues that the so-called economic case was central to their postwar campaigning because they believed that economic exploitation was central to fascism and had wide-ranging implications for postwar societies as well. Furthermore, we challenge the prevailing view on antifascism by demonstrating that for these authors the economic aspect of fascism did not eclipse the genocidal character of fascism and the specifically Jewish experience of it. In contrast to some Marxist historians, they did not see genocidal policies as merely derivative or secondary either. Rather, these leftist-antifascists commemorated Auschwitz in ways which regarded economic exploitation and genocide as interrelated and constitutive aspects of fascism.

China's Cultural Revolution and Mao's External Threat Inflation: Crushing Soviet-Style Capitalist Restoration, 1966–1969

Abstract Stoking fear and hatred of foreign countries to serve internal needs has been a recurring pattern in Communist China. This article examines Chinese discursive treatment of the Soviet Union in 1966–1969 in textual, visual, and audio outlets. During the height of the Cultural Revolution, radical followers of Mao Zedong deliberately choreographed anti-Soviet propaganda in accordance with their evolving political agenda at home. By emphasizing the need to forestall “capitalist restoration” in China, the propagandists alleged that capitalism had already been restored in the USSR. In the face of strong inner-party objection to the terror and destruction of the Cultural Revolution, Maoist polemicists discredited and attacked their domestic foes by accusing them of disloyalty and collaboration with Soviet “revisionists” to subvert China's Communist system. The radical Maoists sought to justify the chaotic violence of the Cultural Revolution by conjuring up the threat of a Soviet invasion, hoping to refocus domestic mass struggle on alleged sympathizers of the USSR. Yet Mao's invocation of this war scare triggered a dangerous security dilemma and turned the USSR into a strategic enemy, a striking example of a self-fulfilling prophecy in world politics.

Empirical Evaluation of Long Waves of Capitalist Development

The Great Recession was followed by tepid recovery which has stretched into more than a decade of constricted growth. Long wave theory, which aims to elucidate patterns of capitalist development for timeframes beyond the business cycle, is relevant for contextualizing the ongoing extended period of constricted growth. Empirical data for the UK and US, typically spanning the 1800s to the present, are evaluated to ascertain long waves of capitalist development are demonstrable. Several indicators are assessed, including manufacturing and industrial production, GDP, investment, capital formation, exports and imports, unemployment rates, and profitability. Results indicate long waves date from the crisis of free competition capitalism and are most pronounced for periods throughout 1914–1991. Widespread capitalist restoration distinguishes 1992–2007 as an intervening period of qualified capitalist growth, during which China’s economy grew dramatically, post-Soviet states struggled, US growth moderately revived, and EU and OECD growth continued to decline. Impacts of the coinciding information and communications technology revolution are also appraised, focusing on the US. Selected indicators are assessed for capitalist-restoration economies and established capitalist aggregate economies in recent long waves. Results do not support the ‘long cycle’ interpretation of long wave theory, which claims extended periods of economic growth occur cyclically owing to endogenous factors. Instead the interpretation promoted by Ernest Mandel is borne out, which asserts transitions from long waves of robust growth to constricted growth are chiefly the result of endogenous factors while upturns depend upon adequate exogenous socio-political system shocks and technological revolutions. Prospects for future technological revolutions and system shocks are briefly considered.

Crisis of Socialism and Effects of Capitalist Restoration

The main criticism leveled at the socialist economies was that a planned economy was inherently less efficient than a market one, due to the sheer scale of the bureaucratic task involved with planning a major economy. But the collapse of the Soviet and later the Russian economy under Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin was an economic disaster that was otherwise unprecedented during times of peace. The world's second superpower was reduced to the status of a minor bankrupt economy with a huge decline in industrial production and in living standards.

“Working Class Gone to Heaven”: From Working Class to Middle Class and Back

This paper problematizes the relationship between the working and middle classes in socialism, which was characterized by consumer culture and state of welfare. It also tackles the extinct middle class in the post-socialist context of the economic crisis and economically defined but politically void “new” working class. The economic realization of the Yugoslav socialist model – a hybrid of planned and market economies – combined the capitalist idea of the state of welfare with the communist execution of social rights. The socialist consumer culture, “searching for welfare”, established a homogenous middle class as a proof of its own social success, leaving the “working class” to be conveniently invoked only in ideological manifests of the governing nomenclature. The discussion about the capitalist restoration of the post-socialist period gives precedence to the lament over the extinction of the middle class and its high standard of living over the issues of class relations. On the other hand, the majority of the 286,075 unemployed and 15,230 of the employed who did not receive their salaries in the first quarter of 2015 are low-skill or vocational workers, i.e., the working class. This new relationship between the working and middle classes problematizes the socialist inheritance of transformation of the working class into the middle class, the recent phenomenon of economically defined working class without a political meaning, the post-socialist class inequality between the employed and the unemployed, and the emancipation of the worker as “the scorned subject” and his mobilization without being necessarily included in the middle-class political activism for the “general good”. Kljucne rijeci self-management, post-socialism, working class, middle class

THE ECONOMIC REFORMS IN CUBA: STRENGTHENING THE COUNTRY'S ESSENTIAL SOCIALIST CHARACTER OR A TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM? THE IMPACT ON EDUCATED YOUTH

AbstractThe economic reforms announced by Raul Castro over two years ago simultaneously opened the economy to a significant degree of privatisation while maintaining the state's political and economic hegemony. This strategy, while opening opportunities to local entrepreneurs and foreign investors, promises to retain the country's revolutionary and social character.While it is too early to make any definitive predictions about whether Cuba is undergoing a process of socialist renewal or one of capitalist restoration, the country is, undoubtedly, experiencing a transition that cannot be easily reversed. Young people are particularly impacted by these changes as guaranteed employment is no longer provided and those job categories that can be exercised in the rapidly growing non-state sector typically do not include the professions to which educated youth aspire.This article provides an overview of the process of economic reform to date, outlines the complexities and controversies that accompany it, and suggests that Cuban young people are increasingly prepared to exercise the option of leaving Cuba in search of work. To be considered a success the economic reforms must, among other accomplishments, convince educated young Cubans that they can meet their aspirations on the island.Keywords: economic reform, educated youth, non-state sector, ideological transformation, capitalist transformation, cuentapropistaIntroductionOn 1 August 2010, in a speech to Cuba's legislature, the National Assembly of Popular Power, Raul Castro announced sweeping economic reforms (Castro, R. 2010b). The August Announcements, as I came to call this speech, and the details which followed, contained measures that were designed, as the Cuban president put it, to move Cuba back from the economic precipice (Castro, R. 2010a). This image of Cuba's economy that the president presented is, by all accounts, an apt description of the country's state of affairs. The speeches of the president, combined with national and international press reports and scholarly articles provide us with detailed information about the challenges facing the Cuban economy. The revitalisation of the Cuban economy is to be achieved through a radical downsizing of the state economic and bureaucratic apparatus. This downsizing, which is known as reduccion de plantilla involves a two-stage programme of massive layoffs which, at the time of writing (mid 2012), approaches 1 million workers in a workforce of about 5 million. In order to absorb the resulting unemployed workers, the reforms provided for the creation of a non-state sector1 composed of three categories: (a) self-employed individuals (who work a cuenta propia, i.e., on their own account, the practitioners of which are known as cuentapropistas); (b) micro and medium sized enterprises; and (c) worker and campesino production cooperatives. In addition to reducing the state's payroll, these layoffs reflected the government's desire to significantly reduce and, as much as possible, eliminate the state's obligation to provide important but non-strategic services to the population (a role now largely reserved for the non-state sector) while leaving key elements of the economy (e.g., large-scale industrial development, off-shore oil exploration and extraction, and the provision of infrastructure) in the hands of the state and its joint-venture partners. The creation of a non-state sector with hundreds of thousands of economically active participants would also serve to create a tax base whereby the government hopes to generate more of the revenues required to pay for state expenditures and the key social services, such as health and education, that are so closely identified as being amongst the most important achievements of the revolution.Cuba: A Process of Socialist Renewal or Capitalist Restoration?Despite the downsizing of the state bureaucracy and the passing over to the non-state sector the task of providing goods and services to the population, President Castro made the commitment that the reforms will not compromise what he called the 'essential socialist nature' of the Cuban revolution. …

Historical Blind Alleys: Arian Kingdoms, Signorie, Stalinism

To theorize the phenomenon of Stalinism within the framework of Marxism requires it to be addressed not only from the standpoint of political economy, but also from that of historical materialism. Leon Trotsky's arguments for ‘political revolution’ grew out of prior explicit analogies between Stalinism and the regime of Napoleon Bonaparte current in the Oppositions in the USSR. Trotsky's followers after the 1940s drew from these de facto analogies stronger analogies with the ‘reactionary-progressive’ Bonapartism of Napoleon I and, more widely held, a belief that capitalist restoration in the USSR, among others, would involve a full-dress ‘social counter-revolution’. These beliefs were politically crippling in the 1980–1990s. This paper proposes that these analogies were false because they drew on historical events at a later stage in the rise of the capitalist class and decline of feudalism than the stage of the rise of the proletariat and decline of capitalism reached at the time of the Russian Revolution. Rather, the appropriate theoretically grounded analogies are with the Arian kingdoms that immediately succeeded the fall of the western Roman Empire, and with the city-states of medieval Italy. In both cases what is involved is the first serious attempt at the sovereignty of a new class, but one which is both externally dominated and internally massively penetrated by the old social and political order, and in consequence tends to decline towards the old order. Hence (as has proved to be the outcome of Stalinism), full ‘social counter-revolution’ is not necessary to complete the process of reintegration in the old order.

CONTEMPORARY LABOR RESISTANCE IN CHINA, 1989–2009

In contemporary China, no sustained labor movement has emerged in the strict sense of the term, namely, an organized social movement initiated from below aimed at the redistribution of national income for the benefit of labor, or power sharing. The reasons for the absence of a militant labor movement in the early twenty‐first century contrast with previous historical periods. The authoritarianism of the one‐party state remains the most important factor throughout all the periods of leadership under the Chinese Communist Party, but there were also significant differences between the Mao period (1949–1976) and the Deng/post‐Deng period (1979–2009). In the former period, especially after 1956, workers were granted the title of zhurenweng (masters of the house); as “the leading class” in “socialist China,” they were seen by the party as the incarnation of “socialist industrialization.” The working class was the primary social force that the party had to rely on in the fight against “revisionism” or “capitalist restoration.” These titles must be heavily qualified by the fact that the workers, like the peasants, did not enjoy basic political freedoms, let alone genuine democratic rights to elect their workplace managers, trade union leadership, or their national leaders. In their daily lives, the honorary title of zhurenweng meant little to workers, who day in and day out had to take orders from their supposed “public servants,” the cadres.

A perfect storm of neglect and failure: postwar capitalist restoration in Northern Morazán, El Salvador

This essay addresses economic relationships in northern Morazán, El Salvador, as they transitioned from a wartime subsistence regime to postwar integration into national and international capitalist circuits of production and exchange. It critically analyses the economic discourses and actions employed by the state, NGOs, and others to discipline the vagrant subjectivities of former FMLN insurgents, their social base, and ex-refugees. Much of the argument is developed via discussions of the postwar fates of residents of Ciudad Segundo Montes and peasant collaborators of the Community Development Council of Northern Morazán and San Miguel. Critical analysis of these cases suggest that economic relationships constitute not merely a product – however contradictory – of struggle over hegemony, but are important channels through which hegemony itself is secured.

Economic Surplus, Social Reproduction, Nurturance and Love

This paper examines the contributions of James Ronald Stanfield to social and political economy. We start the analysis with Stanfield’s contribution to institution building through his education of PhD students, building a graduate program in political economy, and through the associations of social and political economy. Then we go on to scrutinise his creative developments and applications of the notions of economic surplus and social reproduction. This is followed by his extensive work on Karl Polanyi and the disembedded economy. Finally we explore his path-breaking analysis of the great capitalist restoration, the nurturance gap and love. Stanfield was one of the greatest institutionalists and social economists of the last hundred years, and these four areas of energetic creativity are his prime achievements in the area.

Some Social Economics Concepts for Future Research

Under the guidance of a recrudescent nineteenth century ideology, the governance of the global economy has been profoundly altered in the past three decades; indeed, a veritable Great Capitalist Restoration has emerged. It is important to view the transitioning economies and emerging market economies as part of this massive shift in governance. The concept of economic surplus offers a useful perspective on the political economy of governance regimes. Karl Polanyi’s post-Marxian view of lives and livelihood provides important insight into the nature of the Great Capitalist Restoration, its ideologically-driven impetus, and its eventual foundering on the shoals of instability, insecurity, inequality, and social and ecological unsustainability. The ineluctable crisis of the Great Capitalist Restoration provides another opportunity to construct a viable democratic economic future, one that avoids the pitfalls that brought down the corporate-welfare state, and offers more than inauthentic, joyless commodity consumption. To build the Road to this Future, we will need a powerful heterodox economic analysis of agency and governance, guided by a vision of an economy which is subordinate to the lives it provisions.

The Economic Surplus as a Fund for Social Change and Postneoliberal Governance

The central problem in capitalism today is not one of scarce resources clashing against innate, insatiable wants. Rather, the modern problem of monopoly capitalism is one of abundance of production clashing against scarcity of consumers. Indeed, sustaining growth while fighting against excess capacity proves to be the biggest battle in business today, fought by the capitalist power structure with the tools of neoliberalism and globalization. The economic surplus, roughly sketched, represents that gap between productive resources and consumption, and thus represents the abundance that is possible given current technology. The argument set forth is that the economic surplus remains a powerful tool in describing economic relationships and social justice issues within the context of the Great Capitalist Restoration, but more importantly, that the economic surplus represents a tool for social change. The potential for socially just amelioration and change within post-neoliberal governance is explored with explicit reference to the qualitative and instrumental framework proposed by Ron Stanfield in his somewhat overlooked but incredibly important piece, “The Fund for Social Change” (1992).

1989/1991

Fortunately, there are discussions that are resolved by history. There no longer seems to be any point in debating whether or not there was a capitalist restoration after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At least with regard to the USSR and Eastern Europe, since in relation to China and Cuba there are not a few those on the left and inspired by Marxism who are still convinced that they would be States engaged in some type of transition, even if it is in the very long duration, to socialism.

The Social Economics of Neoliberal Globalization

The recent period of intensive and extensive development of global economic integration, or globalization, has reached a crossroads. The regime of the neoliberal Great Capitalist Restoration is not sustainable and fundamental governance changes must be made. This paper adds perspective to the choices that must be made at this critical juncture of the global social economy by applying the master concepts of Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction and Polanyi’s Protective Response.

The confiscation of American prosperity: from right-wing extremism and economic ideology to the next great depression

The Great Capitalist Restoration The End of the Golden Age of Capitalism The Right Mobilizes Richard Nixon's Class War Remaking the World for Business How the Right-Wing Victory Destroys Prosperity The Impotence of Economics Conclusion

Galbraith and Robinson’s Second Crisis of Economic Theory

The “second crisis of economic theory” that, in the 1970s, concerned John Kenneth Galbraith and Joan Robinson continues. There is a considerable literature on the continuing crisis of economics. This essay roots this malaise in the second crisis of economic theory. The “Keynesian revolution” dealt with one aspect of the crisis of economic theory, the inadequacy of aggregate demand, but neo-Keynesian economics left a vacuum by not addressing the state’s role in the structure of output. Hence, issues in regard to distribution and uneven development and militarism, consumerism, and ecological sustainability were neglected and persist with great force today. The road to the neoliberal era of Great Capitalist Restoration was paved by the failure of confidence by modern liberal economics, and the crisis therein continues. Even now, some three decades on, Robinson and Galbraith offer insights toward resolving this impasse.

POSTMODERNITY IN NEW MILLENNIUM CHINA?

It is not unusual these days to hear from cultural critics that the very soul of metaphysical life in China—in which events and existences are imbued with meaning—has been irretrievably damaged in the current era of accelerated capitalist restoration. There are fears that such life cannot be rekindled amidst what has been described as the “crazy quilt” of consumerism that is rampant in contemporary China. The popularity of traditional Chinese culture and the appreciation of the work of elite artists has plummeted, while there has been an astonishing growth of mass-market popular culture. China scholars in a variety of fields have suggested that what they see happening is symptomatic of an entirely new epoch, and this paper considers the extent to which we might usefully refer to contemporary China as a postmodern society. There is a tendency for some scholars offering postmodern critiques to focus only on the negative aspects of postmodernity, especially the fragmentations, discontinuities, and disjunctures associated with a rapidly changing society. There is, however, a more positive side to the postmodern critique, one that offers some exciting new challenges for human geographers working in contemporary China. It is increasingly evident that many individuals and groups are now beginning to carve out new identities for themselves in the face of the dramatic and unparalleled changes they are encountering. What is implied here is that the very nature of the geographical unevenness and difference generated during the process of modernization can perhaps be shaped into the components of a new cultural and identity politics.

Whatever Happened to New Zealand? The Great Capitalist Restoration Reconsidered

(1998). Whatever Happened to New Zealand? The Great Capitalist Restoration Reconsidered. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 32, Papers From The 1998 Afee Meeting, pp. 497-503.

Public Purpose and Private Ownership: Some Implications of the “Great Capitalist Restoration” for the Politicization of Private Sector Firms in Britain

The business firm carries burden of delivering many aspects of the satisfactory in developed world of late twentieth century. It is a fundamental unit of social organization. Analogous in many ways to family, it takes many forms, can be defined in several different ways, and performs a multiplicity of direct and indirect functions. While most evidently economic in character, firm interactions with, and impact on, social life are considerable and are an important feature of politics of capitalist societies. In its modern forms, firm created by political actions in past century and a half (in Britain and especially by Joint Stock Companies Act of 1856) is enshrined in a complex set of laws and practices. 1 In wake of great capitalist restoration, it is interesting to consider politics of capitalist firm in political economy of late twentieth century Britain.