Primitive Socialist Accumulation Research Articles

Catching-up and Pulling Ahead: The Role of China’s Revolutions in its Quest to Escape Dependency and Achieve National Independence

This article argues that the historic tasks of removing foreign domination and landlord-capitalist rule in the colonies are one task and have to be carried out by the proletariat, in alliance with the peasant masses. For its part, dependent on imperialism, the landlord-bourgeoisie are fearful of a shake-up of property relations in any form. The article first explains the intensification of uneven and combined development in the final, monopoly stage of capitalism before turning to China’s struggles for national independence. It is contended that the People’s Republic of China is a transitional economy where the law of primitive socialist accumulation and the law of value are in competition. This is the driver of its social formation, a “unity of opposites” between capitalist and non-capitalist elements. Capitalism in China remains under the control of the Communist Party of China and its social-economic base. The flourishing of private enterprises leads to inequality and capitalist accumulation but has been restrained by state policies and the law of primitive socialist accumulation.

An historical analysis of state capitalism through structural transformation: the case of Uzbekistan

ABSTRACT Structural transformation is widely recognized for being instrumental to the betterment of socio-economic conditions of low and middle-income countries. Yet, its transformative outcome is often conditional on the creation and distribution of surplus value realized by the state. By expanding the understanding of state-led systems of accumulation in Uzbekistan, the article offers a three-fold contribution. First, it strengthens the theoretical linkages between the debate on primitive socialist accumulation and state-led accumulation to understand today’s strategies of structural transformation. Second, it argues for the need to look at the inter-temporal and contextual structures in which social agents and interests interact within the dominant logic of state-led accumulation. Finally, it uses the case of Uzbekistan to show how pre- and neoliberal forms of state-led accumulation led to distinctive social and economic outcomes of structural transformation.

‘Primitive Socialist Accumulation’: Then and Now

‘Primitive Socialist Accumulation’: Then and Now

Socialist Accumulation and Its “Primitives” in Romania

AbstractDrawing on the Romanian case, this article argues against looking at state socialist regimes through the lens of exceptionalism, and assesses the merits of analysing them from the perspective of primitive accumulation. Integrating socialist projects into a longer history of modernization, capital formation, and struggles over labour and land allows me to develop a four-step argument about primitive socialist accumulation in Romania. First, I argue that, in Romania, peasant dispossession had underpinned capital formation for roughly 150 years before the communist takeover. Second, these mechanisms of primitive accumulation constituted crucial matrices for class formation that were irreducible to ideal-typical processes of proletarianization. Third, the articulation between peasant dispossession and strategies of keeping labour cheap was state-led, mandated, or protected, and stood at the core of all modernization projects for the whole period under discussion. And fourth, seen through these lenses, the communist collectivization and nationalization in the 1950s appears as one instance, among others, in a longue-durée history of primitive accumulation in the region.

Introduction: Primitive Accumulation and Socialism

AbstractIn this dossier, Marx's concept of primitive accumulation is applied to socialist development in the Soviet Union, China, and Romania, three countries in which socialist revolution occurred before the full development of capitalism. The introduction profiles the ideas of Evgenii Preobrazhensky, the Soviet theorist and left oppositionist, who first applied Marx's concept to the problems of socialist development, and was executed under Stalin in 1937. Preobrazhensky advanced the idea of “primitive socialist accumulation”, a process that would fund industrialization by extracting surplus through planned, non-coercive transfers from market-based and state sectors. Preobrazhensky's ideas sparked debates within communist parties over collectivization and the tempo of development. The introduction and articles in the dossier point the way towards future comparative research, suggesting that the processes of primitive capitalist and socialist accumulation shared painful similarities.

Blood on the Red Banner: Primitive Accumulation in the World's First Socialist State

AbstractThis article provides a reinterpretation of Stalinism through the lens of Marx's concept of primitive accumulation. It connects a series of defining events that are usually viewed separately – the debates and oppositional movements of the 1920s, industrialization, collectivization, and the “Great Terror” – to the state's need to accumulate capital for development. Using the idea of “primitive socialist accumulation”, first introduced by the Soviet theorist and left oppositionist Evgeny Preobrazhensky, it examines the challenges of building socialism in an underdeveloped, overwhelmingly peasant country. It argues that the emergence of the left and right oppositions in the 1920s and the grain crisis in 1927–1928 resulted from the state's struggle to create a stable balance between rural and urban exchange. The hastily implemented move to collectivize resulted in a cascade of unintended consequences, including a disastrous famine, decrease in food supplies, and a precipitous fall in real wages that impelled record numbers of women into the labor force. Against a background of social instability and discontent, the Kirov murder proved a fearful trigger, igniting fears among Party leaders that ultimately resulted in mass political and social repression. The article is part of a dossier, comprising an introduction and three articles, which offers a new approach to our understanding of socialism in the Soviet Union, China, and Romania.

Acumulação primitiva socialista na China: uma visão alternativa das anomalias do "capitalismo" chinês

China’s economic system has yet to be adequately explained by any models. China’s export-led industries were initially viewed as a source of cheap labor but its economy has now emerged as a serious competitor to advanced capitalism. However, after decades of market reform, China’s state sector, rather than disappearing or being marginalized, has become a leader in strategic sectors and the driver of its investment-led growth. Heterodox political scientists and economists have long argued that China is at best a variant within global capitalism. This paper discusses heterodox theories that position China as part of global capitalism or regard it as a variety of capitalism. It then examines the anomalies of Chinese “capitalism” and suggests that primitive socialist accumulation — operating in conflict with capitalist accumulation — offers a more appropriate theoretical framework for studying China’s development.

Primitive Socialist Accumulation in China: An Alternative View on the Anomalies of Chinese “Capitalism”

China’s economic system has yet to be adequately explained by any models. China’s export-led industries were initially viewed as a source of cheap labor but its economy has now emerged as a serious competitor to advanced capitalism. However, after decades of market reform, China’s state sector, rather than disappearing or being marginalized, has become a leader in strategic sectors and the driver of its investment-led growth. Heterodox political scientists and economists have long argued that China is at best a variant within global capitalism. This paper discusses heterodox theories that position China as part of global capitalism or regard it as a variety of capitalism. It then examines the anomalies of Chinese “capitalism” and suggests that primitive socialist accumulation—operating in conflict with capitalist accumulation—offers a more appropriate theoretical framework for studying China’s development.

The Last of the Romantics? Maoist Economic Development in Retrospect

The notion that the development strategy pursued in China after 1949 had transformed the economy of the People's Republic was a staple of Western scholarship at the close of the Maoist era. Jack Gray's work of the early 1970s stood squarely within this tradition. For him, Maoism was superior to Stalinism as a transitional path to socialism because it avoided the “urban bias” inherent in the primitive socialist accumulation suggested by Preobrazhensky, practised by Stalin, and advocated for China by (inter alia) Bo Yibo and Liu Shaoqi. Instead of extracting resources from the rural sector, the late Maoist development strategy revolved around labour accumulation: the mobilization of rural labour to carry out rural industrialization, agricultural mechanization and the extension of irrigation networks.

China as a capitalist state from primitive socialist accumulation to neoliberal capitalism

China as a capitalist state from primitive socialist accumulation to neoliberal capitalism

Price Scissors, Rationing, and Coercion: An Extended Framework for Understanding Primitive Socialist Accumulation

This paper re-examines the current debate on price scissors based on an extended framework, in which the production and trade of industrial consumer goods within the rural sector is incorporated. It confirms that in the economy considered by Preobrazhensky, consumer rationing, especially of industrial goods in rural areas, is prevalent. Under the binding rationing the price response of agricultural surplus cannot be determined theoretically. This finding reopens the field for empirical investigation. The paper identifies the conditions that guarantee the validity of Preobrazhenshy's two propositions: (1) the state can increase its capital accumulation by moving the terms of trade against peasants, and (2) the urban workers need not necessarily suffer therefrom. It demonstrates that in order to ensure the validity of these two propositions, besides the need to assume positive price response of agricultural surplus and of labour force input, food rationing in urban areas and the rationing of major industrial consumer goods in rural areas are essentially required. As a consequence, the paper suggests that the price-scissors type of regulation would induce the state's coercion on peasants to collect their food surplus.

Preobrazhensky's theory of primitive socialist accumulation

Preobrazhensky's theory of primitive socialist accumulation

Primitive accumulation, agrarian reform and socialist transitions: An argument

This essay constructs a preliminary argument concerning the position of the peasantry in the twin transitions: the first to industrialisation, and the second, towards socialism. In the poor developing country launching upon both simultaneously, the agrarian question bifurcates into two dichotomous sets of issues. The first concerns the instrumentality of the agricultural sector in assisting industrialisation through the provision of investible resources which the nascent industrial sector cannot generate from within or elsewhere. The second set treats the rural sector not as the continued object of exploitation in the form of primitive socialist accumulation, but rather as the subject of socialist development. The two are obviously interdependent, but in the context of a range of widely observable socialist industrialisation strategies, also frequently incompatible. It is argued that according primacy to accelerated industrial growth generates inter‐sectoral imbalances which are resolved through the adoption of expeditiously selective commoditisation and institutional policies, especially in the rural sector, which inexorably divert the trajectory of societal transition away from any socialist direction. The general argument would obviously not apply uniformly to varying concrete specifications, although a fair illustration of it is provided by Ethiopia since 1974.

Paradigmatic Change

It seems that periods during which Mao Zedong dominated the political process in China were characterized by high rates and emphasis on growth of heavy industry. This was the case during the Great Leap Forward (GLF) and again from the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. Why did Mao support, if not initiate, the policy shift back to the strategy of primitive socialist accumulation after 1965? To answer this question we must take a look at Mao's writings on Soviet Economics contained in the so-called Wansui documents. These documents have been used in an attempt to substantiate the proposition that Mao broke with the Stalinist development strategy. This point of view is highly problematic. Mao's critique of Soviet Economics in the Wansui documents dates from the period during and immediately after the GLE The speech Concerning Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR was given at the Zhengzhou Conference in November 1958 (Mao, 1958: 247-251), whereas the written Critique of Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR was worked out in 1959 (Mao, 1959: 156-166). The critical Reading Notes on the

On "Primitive" and Other Forms of Socialist Accumulation: A Review of Preobrazhensky, Bukharin and Trotsky

WITH PUBLICATION OF The Crisis of Soviet Industrialization, an anthology of articles by the Soviet economist, E.A. Preobrazhensky, English-language readers have gained access to important new material for studying divisions within the Bolshevik party during the mid-1920s. Donald A. Filtzer, editor of the volume, is to be commended for his careful selection of articles which complement the other two major works by Preobrazhensky already available in English translation — The New Economics and From the New Economic Policy to Socialism. Filtzer has organized the material into three sections. In the first Preobrazhensky defines the prospects for the New Economic Policy; in the second he studies the strains developing in the Soviet economy by 1925-26; and in the third, the major portion of the volume, he applies Marx's models of reproduction to ascertain the conditions of equilibrium (or proportionality) in concrete capitalism and in the Soviet Union. An alternative way of classifying the essays would be to say that the first section elaborates issues explored in From the New Economic Policy to Socialism; the second provides useful material for a more thorough appreciation of The New Economics; and the third group of articles outlines the technical reasoning which contributed to the theory of primitive socialist accumulation.

Preobrazhenski and the Economics of Soviet Industrialization

I. Introduction, 57. — II. The “goods famine,” 59; the disparity between supply and demand, 59; the peasants' “freedom of choice,” 61. — III. The tempo of industrialization: long-range arguments, 62; overpopulation, 63; the technological factor, 65; the “chain connection,” 67. — IV. The law of “primitive socialist accumulation,” 68; the formulation of the law, 68; the “socialist protectionism,” 70; taxation by price, 72. — V. The debate, 75. — VI. The solution of the Preobrazhenski dilemma, 80.