The Roots of the Present Crisis in the Soviet Economy

Abstract

What developed in the USSR and similar systems were societies in transition between capitalism and socialism, i.e. postcapitalist societies submitted to the unrelenting pressure of the capitalist system and the capitalist world market, military pressure, political pressure and economic pressure. Furthermore, for specific historical reasons neither unrelated to that pressure nor purely reducible to it, power in these societies was usurped (with the partial exception of Cuba) by a privileged bureaucracy, which by its concrete policies and the social consequences they engendered, made significant advances in the direction of socialism impossible. So the only conclusion one can draw from the disaster which befell these societies is not that socialism has failed but that Stalinism, i.e. bureaucratic dictatorship, has failed. People belonging to the political/theoretical tradition which I represent among others can say at least as emphatically as the neo-liberals (and certainly more than the social-democrats and neo-social-democrats): we told you so. For we have been predicting this crisis for decades. And we can convincingly show that the concrete policies which led to that crisis and the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe in no way represent directly or indirectly a "logical product" of the theories or political projects of Marx and even of Lenin. They were conceived and implemented in a complete break with the ABC of Marxism, again an analysis not made now post festum but decades earlier.