Interpretations of the East III

the debate on the nature of Soviet-Style societies and states (Final part: Interpretations centered around the prevalence of state and/or bureaucratic capitalismand the problematic convergence regarding the concept of stalinism

Abstract

This is the last in a series of three articles critiquing today’s main theories on the societies and States formerly belonging to the East’s socialist camp. This final article focuses on different Marxist interpretations that had identified the (re)emergence of capitalism within these societies even before the 1989-91 tumbling of the Berlin wall. The review of these readings encompasses (1) Friedrich Engels’ original formulation of the State capitalism concept and its later resuscitation by Lenin and the Bolshevik party leadership in the early years of this century; (2) social-demo- cratic views regarding the bourgeois nature of the Soviet revolution during the 1920s (highlighting the perspectives of Karl Kautsky and the Russian Mensheviks); (3) criticisms of the Soviet experience by the so-called council Communists (i.e., the positions of Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, Germany’s KAPD, Karl Korsch, Arthur Rosenberg, Otto Ruhle, and Paul Mattick); (4) the stances of a second line of ‘dissident Trotskyists’ (Raia Dunaievskaia, C.L.R. James, and Tony Cliff); (5) the theories developed by the Socialism or Barbarism group (particularly Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort); (6) Maoist and post-Maoist theses (the official positions of the Chinese C.P. and the Albanian Labor Party during the 1960s and 1970s, plus the ideas developed by Charles Bettelheim and Bernard Chavance); and (7) positions grounded in world- system theory (Immanuel Wallerstein and Robert Kurz, for example). The article closes with a critical examination of the problematic recourse used in most Marxist interpretations of the concept of Stalinism (reviews found in this and my previous article). It is argued that this recourse is more an escape from the fundamental problems underlying the current theoretical crisis in Marxist thinking than any courageous effort to examine these problems from the angle of the negative experience of this century’s first experiments in socialism.