Socialist Mode Of Production Research Articles

Race and caste in the making of US sociology

In this article, we take a look at the influence of 20th-century provenance of caste as a category of academic importance meriting a debate in American sociology and beyond. Two actors participated in the animating discourse of caste and race in the annals of American sociology. Oliver Cromwell Cox took a class position to define caste, unmaking the hierarchies set in social structures. Instead, he advocated for a racialized system to understand the post-slavery capitalist America. Gerald Berreman represented a different camp that found social hierarchies to be co-determinant of relations and division arranged into a caste society. The debate over caste, nevertheless, admitted to the plausibility of castes contrasted with India’s caste system. However, caste categorization was found to be an appropriate application to the conditions of social inequalities. Gunnar Myrdal and other scholars of repute contributed to the debate. What remained limited in their theoretical contributions to the discussion was an inadequate focus on the lived reality and politics of the caste formulations in the postcolonial, socialist mode of production. A serious examination of untouchability, sub-castes and sub-sub-castes that regulate the kernel of the caste system as well as the racialized castes in India were not studied or referenced in detail. This article adds to that void a theoretical understanding of the discussion on caste, race and colour in sociological and anthropological disciplines.

The Crises of Imperialism and the Prospect of Socialism

In this article, I take the global and long-term perspective on imperialism, from the rise of colonialism and capitalism through its different stages. I do it because it gives a sense of direction of how the world-system will move in the current ecological, economic, and political endgame of capitalism. I use the lens of world-system analysis and dependency theory in my inquiry, to show its relevance in the twenty-one-century. Finally, I discuss the possibilities for a transformation towards a socialist mode of production as an outcome of the current crises. In this article, I take the global and long-term perspective on imperialism, from the rise of colonialism and capitalism through its different stages. I do it because it gives a sense of direction of how the world-system will move in the current ecological, economic, and political endgame of capitalism. I use the lens of world-system analysis and dependency theory in my inquiry, to show its relevance in the twenty-one-century. Finally, I discuss the possibilities for a transformation towards a socialist mode of production as an outcome of the current crises.

Household Production, Household Activity, and Human Development

In a socialist mode of production, human activity is no longer constrained by the capitalist need to maximize surplus labor, and correspondingly minimize necessary labor. The guiding principle for its organization can therefore be the development and realization of human potential. Some idea of what this could consist of can be derived from observations of the struggle by both wage laborers and household laborers for such goals within the capitalist mode of production, a struggle that is distinct from that necessary to resist the capitalist appropriation of surplus labor. In so doing, it directs attention to the large proportion of the human activity of the working class within capitalist societies that takes the form of household labor, relative to wage labor, and thus its potential significance for the restructuring of human activity in a socialist mode of production.

A new solution to the “difficult problem” of the object of study of political economy

PurposeAs there are different interpretations of the object of study in the preface to the first edition of Capital (Volume I) by Karl Marx, disagreements arise over the object of study on political economy, which becomes a “difficult problem.” The purpose of the paper is to bring a new solution to the “difficult problem.”Design/methodology/approachBased on the analysis of the logic of the original text, the authors attempted to give a new interpretation of the “difficult problem” by analyzing the structure of Capital. The object of study of political economy is “the relations of production in the broad sense” of the capitalist mode of production.FindingsIt comprises relations of production in the narrow sense and exchange relations in the broad sense, and the latter can be divided into exchange relations in the narrow sense and distribution relations. The three of them correspond to Volume I, II and III of Capital, respectively. Consumption in “the four-section theory” is not studied by the political economy.Originality/valueAnd the four-section theory is not a part of the theory of Marxist economics but a part of the classical economics criticized by Marx. Therefore, the object of study of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics is “the relations of production in the broad sense” regarding the socialist mode of production with Chinese characteristics, which is different from the capitalist relations of production in the broad sense.

Centenary of the GOELRO Plan: Opportunities and Challenges of Planned Economy

The State Commission for Electrification of Russia (GOELRO) is the first in the world and, most importantly, successful experience in the development and practical implementation of a long-term plan for the recovery and development of the economy of a large country. It uses the achievements of the third technical and the possibilities of the second social revolution. The Soviet Union was deservedly proud of this experience as an integral part of the socialist mode of production. The GOELRO plan has become such a symbolic phenomenon in the public consciousness that ideas of its repetition have been periodically emerging for 100 years now. The attractiveness of the paradigm for managing the future and the effectiveness of the integrated approach implemented during its development (later developed as a methodology for systemic studies in the energy sector) were so great that not only all socialist but also many capitalist countries followed it. The planned system of the Soviet Union provided record economic growth rates in the 1930s, a unique mobilization capacity in 1941–1945, and a steady rise until the early 1980s. However, in the following years, it became increasingly difficult for such a system to cope with the country’s sprawling and diversified economy. Moreover, this was one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia, having abandoned rigid centralized planning, is currently trying to create a system of indicative strategic planning according to Western models but has not really succeeded in this yet. One-hundred years later and almost three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is a need to comprehend new possibilities of planned economic management. Looking back, one can wonder at the wretchedness of the instruments of planned work in the Soviet Union. The widespread use of computers and the Internet has radically improved the instrumental equipment of planning processes, but their methodological, informational, and model support remains unsatisfactory. The emergence of new means of organizing reporting and generating forecast information, as well as methods for mathematical modeling of the energy sector’s development that meet market conditions, opens up favorable prospects in the context of the fourth (information-digital) transformation of the productive forces of society.

The Bashkirs in Turkmenistan: Experience of Intercultural Communications in the Soviet Period

The article is devoted to the history of the formation, reasons and stages of the resettlement of the ethnic group of the Bashkirs in Turkmenistan, which in the conditions of modern geopolitical realities can be attributed to the "external diaspora" of the Bashkir people. On the territory of the republic, it began to take shape in the first years of Soviet power, during a fierce struggle for the implementation of new ideological principles. In this struggle, the Bashkirs played an ambiguous role. Analysis of ethno-statistical materials shows that the postwar period was a time of growth in the percentage of the Bashkir population. Population migration from densely populated areas of Bashkiria to industrial centers, to mining sites, to the newly irrigated lands of Turkmenistan under the conditions of the socialist mode of production was predominantly planned. Most of them preferred to live in large cities and urban settlements. In the Turkmen SSR, as throughout the USSR, the main language of interethnic communication and the means of familiarization with socialist culture was the Russian language. Therefore, many of the Bashkirs living there were fluent in Russian, and some also spoke Turkmen. The names of famous personalities from among the Bashkirs are associated with Turkmenistan; among them: scientist and politician A. Validov, composer T. Karimov, general T. Kusimov, Hero of Socialist Labor N. Fazliakhmetov and others.

Социализация экономики в Латинской Америке: pro et contra кооперативного движения на опыте Кубы

This paper studies relations between socialization and technical progress. It investigates the experience of Latin America through the categorical apparatus of Marxist dependency theory, which shows that low level of technological advance does not present an insurmountable obstacle for socialization of the economy. The article focuses on a specific example represented by Cuban cooperative movement. Basing on the current Cuban legislation that regulates cooperative activity, some statistics and investigations of several prominent scientists, who dedicate to the issue, the paper shows the difference between existing types of cooperatives in Cuba. It also embraces their advantages that favor the process of socialization. At the same time, the author highlights some drawbacks of cooperative movement that might turn out to be major pitfalls for socialization. The study pays attention to uniqueness of Cuban case as it is based on a socialist mode of production.

Historical School vs. Socialist School of Jurisprudence

Historical school and socialist school are inverse in nature because historical school accepts social, norms, values, custom, traditions, rites and rituals whereas socialist school rejects such instruments and supports communist doctrine and manifesto. Law is not made but found is the concept of historical jurisprudence whereas law is the instruments of exploitation by bourgeois people against proletariat people is the concept of socialist school. However, Karl Marx follows dialectical historical materialism, which resembles with the tradition of historical jurisprudence. Moreover, Neo-Marxist argues that state apparatuses are working as the instrument of false consciousness. Conversely, if we look at historical jurisprudence, Friedrich Carl Von Savigny, Montesquieu, Georg Friedrich Puchta, Sir Henry James, Sumner Maine, Herbert Spencer and Hegel are the supporters of historical jurisprudence. Yet, Savigny and Main had major contribution in historical jurisprudence. Savigny supports spirit of people and Roman law and Maine supports law in traditional society i.e. traditional command, custom and codification whereas Progressive society adapts legal fiction, equity and legislation which changes status to contract. Oppositely, Karl Marx, Frederic Engels, Evgeny Pashukanis, Karl Renner, Antoni Gramsci and Frankfurt school are the supporter of socialist tradition in law. As Marx classifies mode of production as primitive communal society, slave mode of production, feudal mode of production, capitalistic mode of production, socialist mode of production and communism, which resembles with the evolutionary historical method of analysis. And, Marx classifies reactionary socialism; feudal socialism, petty-bourgeois socialism, German or true socialism; conservative or bourgeois socialism, critical-Utopian socialism and communism. However, many country of the world follows democratic socialism with the concept of welfare state, which even accepts custom, traditions, rites and rituals religion, which is different than Marxist socialism.

Urban Anthropology in China (review)

130 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 Greg Guldin and Aidan Southall, editors. Urban Anthropology in China Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1993. copyright1994 by University of Hawai'i Press This volume is a collection ofpapers presented at the First International Urban Anthropology Conference in Beijing in December 1989. Although the title is Urban Anthropology, most of the contributions are from other disciplines including urban planning, sociology, and history. Each of the twenty-two substantive papers (divided into four sections) stands alone. As editor Greg Guldin points out, "there is a distinct gap in the traditions of scholarship and stylistic formulae between the Chinese and foreign contributors, but there is no unanimity among the Chinese participants as well. Urban Anthropology in China thus encompasses scholars from Europe, Asia, and North America, each variously pursuing their own individual and national versions of urban anthropology." Indeed, there is virtually no discussion ofthe many empirical and conceptual differences that emerge between the various essays except for the introductory remarks which editor Aidan Southall provides for each of the four sections. Ifthere is one theme that runs through this disparate assemblage ofessays, it might be the question of the uniqueness of Chinese cities in view ofWesternderived models of modernization and urbanization. One point that emerges in most ofthe essays concerns the nature ofboth the distinction and the relationship between the words "rural" and "urban" when applied to China. There seem to be three distinct approaches to addressing this question. First is the Marxist approach, which views changes in the city as caused by changes in the mode of production. Aidan Southall, the strongest proponent of this view, takes a very long-term historical—and thus highly generalized—look at how the form and function of Chinese cities have oscillated between the centralizing forces of the "Asiatic" mode and the decentralizing forces of the "Feudal" mode of production . This analysis is too generalized and inconclusive to convince me ofits theoretical merit. On the other hand, Southall makes a number of pithy observations to the effect that the Marxist ideal of creating a society in which the city and the countryside merge into a unified field of economic and cultural activity has been accomplished to a much greater extent in the advanced capitalist countries than in China or the other "socialist" countries. This raises the question ofjust what impact the socialist mode ofproduction has had on cities. Ivan Szelenyi holds that, compared to capitalist development, socialism in the industrializing cities of Eastern Europe limited economic and Reviews 131 cultural diversity and lessened the pressure to economize on space, and this resulted in lower population densities and a lowered level ofsocial marginality. On the other hand, the experience ofthe Soviet Union, according to Ovsey Shkaratan, was somewhat different. Contrary to Marxist expectations that socializing the means ofproduction would give planners leverage to reallocate economic and cultural assets beyond the urban centers, the very centralization of decision making , especially with the rise of Stalin, concentrated most ofthe assets and people in a few huge urban centers. One of the problems that socialist societies encounter as they rejoin the capitalist system is how to reclassify and recalculate the value of state-owned and other forms of socialized land used for productive and consumptive purposes. VesnaVucinic discusses this in terms of the ideological rationalizations behind China's urban land-reform movement of the 1980s. Three positions were staked out—the orthodox Marxist, the capitalist liberal, and the pragmatic compromise . The pragmatists borrowed the "capitalist" mechanisms and renamed and modified them to fit into a reformed socialist system. The second approach taken by contributors to this volume is an applied systems approach, which is the provenance of city planners. These authors are concerned with modeling the political and cultural interventions that shape the material conditions of urban society. Two of the contributors discuss the need to develop models ofurban planning and development that reflect the particular and regional cultural realities of Chinese, Asian, and Third World cities. Tridib Banerjee uses the dual-economy model (an economic system composed of"informal " small-scale enterprise and "formal" large-scale enterprise) to compare the postcolonial developments ofShanghai and Calcutta...

The Socialist Transformation of Cuban Agriculture: Domestic and International Constraints

The world system perspective suggests that socialist governments cannot construct truly socialist societies because they remain part of a larger capitalist world economy and must emphasize trade-oriented production for profit. Using this thesis to examine developments in Cuba since the 1959 revolution, I discuss (1) changes in the role of trade and the impact of the world economy on the structure of Cuba's domestic production; and (2) forces shaping the organization of Cuban agriculture since the revolution. Cuba is affected by global capitalist dynamics, internal class forces, and its distinctive trade relations with the Soviet bloc. I conclude that the world economy perspective enhances our understanding of developments in societies purporting to be socialist, but that the thesis itself is insufficient for a complete analysis. A world system perspective challenges widely held assumptions about development possibilities in countries that claim to be socialist. According to Wallerstein (1974, 1979), societies that nationalize ownership of resources within their territory, declare themselves socialist, and propagate socialist ideologies cannot in fact construct a socialist mode of production because they remain part of the larger capitalist world system.' He also argues that because such countries are integrated into a capitalist world economy, they are pressured to organize production to profit from market trade. Socialist and, especially, communist ideologies obfuscate the fact that regimes committed to socialist transformations remain part of a capitalist world economy. A state which collectively owns the means of production is a collective capitalist firm as long as it participates, as all states are compelled to, in the market of the capitalist world economy. This paper examines how Wallerstein's thesis helps explain certain developments in Cuban agriculture since the 1959 revolution. Efforts to expand and diversify agriculture are constrained by global economic forces and not merely, as Dumont (1970), Mesa-Lago (1978), and Ritter (1974), among others, have tended to stress, by domestic organizational inefficiencies and utopian shortsightedness. I summarize Wallerstein's argument and discuss the conditions that should prevail in Cuba were his thesis correct. Then I examine how and why the agrarian sector has been reorganized since 1959 and what effects the changes have had on the island's relations with the world economy.

Stalinism as the Ideology of State Capitalism

The Soviet ideological formation of the Stalin period was closely linked with the class struggles and the economic and social transformations of that period. This article examines two major themes running through the some times contradictory ideology of Stalinism: 1) "state socialism" as a political ide ology, and 2) the "socialist mode of production" as an economic ideology. On the first theme, the reinforcement of the state was identified with the reinforce ment of socialism. The denial of social contradictions was combined with praise for the dictatorial apparatus. "Workerism" meant that certain pretended qual ities of workers (discipline, self-sacrifice) were used as a means of repression and that the existence of a "worker base" was seen as a guarantee of the party's revo lutionary character. The second section, on economic ideology, is only summar ized here. Socialism was increasingly identified with a planned economy subject to objective laws — an organized form of capitalism.

The Economic Aspect of the Socialist Way of Life

The socialist mode of production determined the origin and development of a basically new, socialist way of life. This socioeconomic category, which is more and more widely used by the social sciences, provides a supplementary but very important characterization of the socialist mode of production.

State Administration of the Land Resources of the USSR

The establishment of the Soviet state as the sole landowner in the USSR, the concentration in its hands of the functions of governmental administration of land resources, and the institution of the socialist mode of production in town and countryside have created all the necessary objective conditions for organizing rational land use.

Some Problems in Applying Mathematical Methods to Economics, and the Political Economy of Socialism

Apart from the essential difference in socioeconomic relations, the socialist mode of production is distinguished from capitalism in still one other important aspect. This distinction is that under socialism the objective laws are realized consciously within the framework of society as a whole. Productive forces and productive relations are under the control of men and are consciously developed and improved by them. The transition from capitalism to communism was visualized by Engels as a leap from the realm of blind necessity to the realm of freedom, with freedom conceived of as comprehended necessity, as man's domination over social production and his economic relations. The degree of men's freedom under socialism depends entirely on the depth of understanding and conscious realization of objective economic laws. Even under socialism, necessity that is not understood remains blind necessity and does not provide a normal course of growth of social production, exchange, and distribution.

The Plan Target and Material Incentive (Concerning the Proposals of Comrade Liberman)

Planning and material incentive are two most important factors in the development of the socialist economy. For the first time in the entire history of the development of the productive forces of society, social ownership of the means of production, constituting the basis of socialist relationships in production, eliminates the antagonism between the interests of the individual enterprise and those of society. The socialist mode of production unifies hundreds of thousands of enterprises into a structured system, operating and directed in accordance with a single national economic plan that has been discussed by the people as a whole and has the force of law.

Development of Social Consumption Funds During the Period of Full-Scale Communist Construction

Among the theoretical problems connected with the transition from socialism to communism, the question of the prospects of development and role of the public consumption funds occupies an important place. Social consumption funds represent one of the categories of the socialist economy. (1) Their origin and development are connected with the development and consolidation of the socialist mode of production. In essence, they are an expression of the elements of communist relationships which begin to take shape under socialism.

A Decisive Step in Creating Material and Technological Basis for Communism

During the years of Soviet power, the peoples of our country, under the leadership of the Communist Party, have effected tremendous transformations in all fields of the economy and of culture. As the result of the industrialization of the country, the collectivization of agricuIture, the elimination of exploiting classes and the execution of a cultural revolution in the USSR, the socialist mode of production has triumphed. Our country was transformed from a backward agrarian country to one of powerful industry and collective farms.

The Action of the Law of Monetary Circulation under Socialism

Up to now in our economic literature the question of Marx's formula for the amount of money needed for circulation under the socialist mode of production has not been sufficiently examined.