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Is the Red Flag Flying? The Political Economy of the Soviet Union Today
Since the October Revolution of 1917 there has been considerable debate among both socialists and enemies of socialism on the class nature of the Soviet Union. This debate waxed and waned over time in good measure as a function of the international policies of the Soviet Union and its enemies. We have seen a great revival of interest in the question among sympathizers of Cultural Revolution era of the People's Republic of China, which in 1967 had claimed that capitalism has been restored in the Soviet Union. Many of the issues and arguments raised by various branches of the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s and 1940s are once again being discussed and supported by the Maoist camp in response to this debate. On the other hand defenders of the Soviet Union continue to claim that the country was socialist, and this book expounds in detail just why socialism was indeed still prevailing in the Soviet Union at the time of it's publication in the late 1970's and early 80's.
235 pages, Hardcover
First published April 28, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 10, 2012
short answer: yes, kind of.
the book basically argues that the soviet union was "on balance" progressive, internally and in its relations with other states. szymanski doesn't find evidence of a coercive labor market( a reserve army of unemployed), a ruling class, or a profit motive. externally, he doesn't find that the soviet union maintained neocolonies or that it manipulated governments into concluding unequal treaties or trade agreements. he does find evidence (how could you miss it) of what he calls 'hegemonism,' but he passes most of this off as anti-NATO paranoia- for instance, he sees the hungarian intervention in 1956 as a pre-emptive strike against the western powers gaining a foothold in the eastern bloc and weakening the warsaw pact.
he calls the soviet union technocratic state socialism (and provides a helpful chart so you know where his definition of the soviet union fits in with all of his other criteria for different systems) where highly skilled workers, academics, bureaucrats and scientists direct production and are not accountable in a direct sense but whose interests largely coincide with those of most citizens. and he says that recent trends have been in the direction of increasing worker participation in determining workplace conditions and production, a higher standard of living, a lower rate of inequality, and more equal footing with other members of the COMECON. all of his data is right there in the footnotes too.
the predictions he makes at the end of the book are obviously totally moot now, and he does gloss over or weasel through certain events (the purges, the interventions in hungary and czechoslovakia), and he outright ignores possible regional variation in the soviet union itself, restricting himself to describing the interactions between the soviet union and different blocs of countries- eastern europe, the socialist and non socialist third world. if he had looked harder at central asia or siberia he might have decided that the soviet union was social imperialist after all. to be fair (and to do some weaseling of my own) he is defending the soviet union from charges made by other groups, and nobody else seems to mention or care about regional variation and national minorities in the soviet union. but in general he makes his case well, and it's refreshing to read someone discussing something more concrete than "after the implementation of these reforms, capitalism was restored." his in-depth investigations of actually existing soviet society show that it's way more complicated than that. I've never seen, for example, someone actually discuss the soviet job market or the "commodity basket" of necessary goods and how affordable it was for average people. you don't realize how crucial these things are to an argument about the restoration of capitalism until you read a book like this one.
the book basically argues that the soviet union was "on balance" progressive, internally and in its relations with other states. szymanski doesn't find evidence of a coercive labor market( a reserve army of unemployed), a ruling class, or a profit motive. externally, he doesn't find that the soviet union maintained neocolonies or that it manipulated governments into concluding unequal treaties or trade agreements. he does find evidence (how could you miss it) of what he calls 'hegemonism,' but he passes most of this off as anti-NATO paranoia- for instance, he sees the hungarian intervention in 1956 as a pre-emptive strike against the western powers gaining a foothold in the eastern bloc and weakening the warsaw pact.
he calls the soviet union technocratic state socialism (and provides a helpful chart so you know where his definition of the soviet union fits in with all of his other criteria for different systems) where highly skilled workers, academics, bureaucrats and scientists direct production and are not accountable in a direct sense but whose interests largely coincide with those of most citizens. and he says that recent trends have been in the direction of increasing worker participation in determining workplace conditions and production, a higher standard of living, a lower rate of inequality, and more equal footing with other members of the COMECON. all of his data is right there in the footnotes too.
the predictions he makes at the end of the book are obviously totally moot now, and he does gloss over or weasel through certain events (the purges, the interventions in hungary and czechoslovakia), and he outright ignores possible regional variation in the soviet union itself, restricting himself to describing the interactions between the soviet union and different blocs of countries- eastern europe, the socialist and non socialist third world. if he had looked harder at central asia or siberia he might have decided that the soviet union was social imperialist after all. to be fair (and to do some weaseling of my own) he is defending the soviet union from charges made by other groups, and nobody else seems to mention or care about regional variation and national minorities in the soviet union. but in general he makes his case well, and it's refreshing to read someone discussing something more concrete than "after the implementation of these reforms, capitalism was restored." his in-depth investigations of actually existing soviet society show that it's way more complicated than that. I've never seen, for example, someone actually discuss the soviet job market or the "commodity basket" of necessary goods and how affordable it was for average people. you don't realize how crucial these things are to an argument about the restoration of capitalism until you read a book like this one.
June 1, 2015
Szymanski convincingly argues that the USSR was genuinely socialist in the 80s. There's a couple big issues I take with this book, however. Firstly, Szymanski seems to view socialism as a mode of production that is classless (similar to Stalin's view on socialism). Seeing socialism as its own mode of production is ridiculous in my opinion, though it doesn't particularly hurt Szymanski's argument. A second criticism is Szymanski's lack of attention to self-detemination, race, and colonialism in the USSR. Did Russia/ethnic Russians' relationship with the Central Asian republics and/or with Siberia/indigenous Siberians constitute colonialism? And if so what does this say about the class nature of the USSR and/or the value of orthodox Marxism's conception of socialism as an analytic? Szymanski doesn't go into these questions.
July 15, 2022
Decent. I skimmed some and there were some unnecessary technical facts but otherwise not bad.
July 24, 2024
Tries to do the good science, is maybe a little revisionist. More work needed.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews