Revolution, class and globalisation in the transition from state socialism

European Societies

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 131-155

  Lane, David ^a,b  

^a Department of Sociology   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Globalisation; Revolution; Russia; Social class; State socialism; Transition

Indexed keywords

EID: 27844555426     PISSN: 14616696     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/1461669042000327054     Document Type: Review

References (81)

1. Klaus von Beyme suggests the term 'system's change'. He claims that the 'process of transformation was so unique that the old notions of revolution and reform tend to be inappropriate'. 'System's change', he contends, lacks 'the connotation of violence and civil war', but recognises the far-reaching change of politics, society and economics. Klaus von Beyme, Transition to Democracy in Eastern Europe. New York: Macmillan, 1996. pp. 18, 19.
2. This view is clearly put by Kornai. 'The socialist system was a brief interlude, a temporary aberration in the course of historical events . . . [T]here is no alternative to the "capitalist system"'. J. Kornai, From Socialism to Capitalism. London: The Social Market Foundation, 1998. pp. 2, 40
3. B. Kaminski, The Collapse of State Socialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. pp. 16, 3.
4. Leslie Holmes, 'Russia as a Post-Communist Country', in Graeme Gill (ed.), Elites and Leadership in Russian Politics. Basingstoke: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998, pp. 167-70. Leslie Holmes's argument is that they have moved from one party systems with command economies to multiparty ones with 'increasingly privatised and marketized economies'. The previous state ideology, he claims, 'had in all cases been dismantled. By any definition all this represented a rapid and fundamental change of system, which is . . . the most basic and universal definition of . . . revolution'.
5. Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press 1997. p. 131. Italics in original.
6. Claus Offer, Varieties of Transition, Cambridge: Polity Press 1996. p. 30.
7. Offer, Varieties of Transition, ibid. p. 31.
8. Jack A. Goldstone, 'The Soviet Union: Revolution and Transformation', in Mattei Dogan and John Higley, Elites, Crises and the Origins of Regimes, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 1998. pp. 95-124, quotation p. 96.
9. Valerie Bunce, Subversive Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 155.
10. Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters, The Death of Class, Sage: London and Thousand Oaks, 1996. See pp. 58-9 and 146-7. Quotation p. 146.
11. Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters, The Death of Class, Sage: London and Thousand Oaks, 1996. p. 147.
12. M. Burton and J. Higley, 'Political Crises and Elite Settlements', in M. Dogan and J. Higley, Elites, Crises and the Origins of Regimes. Rowman and Littlefield, 1998, p. 66.
13. M. Dogan and J. Higley, 'Elites, Crises and Regimes . . .' Elites, Crises and the Origins of Regimes. loc. cit. p. 14.
14. S.A. Resnich and R.D. Wolff, Class Theory and History, New York and London: Routledge, 2002 (Part 2).
15. M. Schachtman, The Bureaucratic Revolution, New York: The Donald Press, 1962;
16. T. Cliff, Russia: A Marxist Analysis. London: Socialist Review Publications, n.d. but 1964.
17. Mike Haynes, 'Class and Crisis - the Transition in Eastern Europe', International Socialism, Spring 1992, pp. 45-104.
18. See also its critics - L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed. London: Plough Press, 1957;
19. Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory. London: Merlin, 1958.
20. A. Callinicos, The Revenge of History: Marxism and the East European Revolutions. Cambridge: Polity Press 1991. p. 56.
21. Chris Harman, 'The Storm Breaks', International Socialism, no. 46 (Spring 1990), p. 82.
22. Resnich and Wolff, p. 88.
23. Others, such as Paresh Chattopadhyay and Neil Fernandez, Jacques Sapir have argued that the economic relations even in the Soviet Union took market forms. See discussion in Mike Haynes, 'Marxism and the Russian Question in the Wake of the Soviet Collapse', Historical Materialism, No. XXX, pp. 338-40. Haynes rightly concludes that local enterprises were constrained by the centre.
24. Resnich and Wolff, fn 20, p. 103.
25. This point is trenchantly put by Ernest Mandel, 'A theory which has not withstood the test of facts', International Socialism, no. 49. (Winter 1990), pp. 43-65.
26. In his essay on the working class, Hillel Ticktin claims that 'The whole dynamic of the [Soviet] system is toward its own demise and overthrow by the workers.' Origins of the Crisis in the USSR. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1992, p. 67.
27. The only contender would be Solidarity in Poland, but this was a movement with much more than a worker and trade union basis.
28. Gil Eyal, Ivan Szenenyi and E. R. Townsley, Making Capitalism without Capitalists: Class Formation and Elite Struggles in Post-Communist Central Europe. New York and London: Verso, 1998.
29. See Table 1 in Lawrence P. King and Ivan Szelenyi, 'The New Capitalism in Eastern Europe: Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Postcommunist Capitalisms' in Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg (Eds), Handbook of Economic Sociology. Second Edition. Draft copy dated 2001.
30. Gil Eyal et al., p. 18. Italics added.
31. For an updated version, see Mike Haynes loc cit.
32. I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. p. 271.
33. Socialist states he argues are socialist movements in power in states that are part of a single capitalist world economy. I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy. Ibid. p. 280.
34. Christopher K. Chase-Dunn, Socialist States in the World System. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. 1982. p. 39.
35. Chase-Dunn, p. 40-7.
36. A. Callinicos, The Revenge of History. Oxford: Polity Press 1991, p. 25.
37. Terry Boswell and Christopher Chase-Dunn, The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism, London and Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000. p. 135.
38. GNP data from CIA, The World Factbook 1986. US Government Office, Washington, DC. 1986. p. 227.
39. Data refer to USSR and Eastern Europe. 'The European Economy in 1975'. United Nations, Economic Survey of Europe in 1975. New York: 1975. p. 144.
40. For details of the 1970s see, J. Wilczynsky, The Economics and Politics of East-West Trade. London: Macmillan 1969, pp. 382-3.
41. See also the discussion in A. Gunder Frank, Crisis: In the World Economy. London: Heinemann, 1980, pp. 194-202.
42. Leslie Sklair, Globalisation: Capitalism and its Alternatives. Oxford 2002, p. 225.
43. The following companies had investments in foreign countries, after the collapse of the socialist countries officials in these companies were well placed to procure and deal in foreign assets. For instance, from the USSR Gosbank 20 investments, Soyuznefteexport (18), Vneshtorgbank (20), Sovracht (23), Exportles (14), Stankoimport (15), Mashpriborintorg (10), Soyuzchimexport (12). For a full list see: McMillan, pp. 53-5.
44. Carl H. McMillan, Multinationals from the Second World. London: Macmillan, 1987. p. 34.
45. McMillan, p. 35.
46. McMillan, p. 43.
47. 'Socialist Countries' Enterprises Abroad: New Trends', CTC Reporter, 24, Autumn 1987. p. 19.
48. L. Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed. (1945): 248.
49. Trotsky, 1945: 248-9.
50. L.Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed. (1945): 248.
51. E. Mandel, 'Once Again on the Trotskyist definition of the Social Nature of the Soviet Union', Critique, no. 12, 1980
52. G.W. Kolodko, From Shock to Therapy, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, p. 28.
53. He cryptically calls this 'the politics of "the worse, the better"'. G.W. Kolodko, From Shock to Therapy, 2000, p. 28. Ibid.
54. J.R. Millar, 'History, Method and the Problem of Bias', in Fleron and Hoffmann, p. 187.
55. David S. Mason, 'Attitudes toward the Market and Political Participation in the Postcommunist States', Slavic Review, vol. 54, no. 2 (Summer 1995). pp. 393-5. Mason points out that, '. . . in many of these countries the new governments are dominated by the highly educated, because the revolutions swept into power intellectuals who had previously opposed the communist system'.
56. 'Market Dynamics and Historical Change', in Randall Collins, Macrohistory, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. pp. 177-208, especially pp. 207-8.
57. Michael Cox, '"A Failed Crusade?": The United States and Postcommunist Russia' in David Lane (Editor), The Legacy of State Socialism and the Future of Transformation. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
58. See also David Lane, The Rise and Fall of State Socialism. Cambridge: Polity 1996, especially pp. 176-83.
59. . . . Bunce, Subversive. p. 62.
60. Bunce, Subversive. p. 156.
61. Studies of emigres, for example, showed a consistent pattern of pattern of changing support: in the 1980s, the young were much more critical of state socialism, whereas for the early post-war generation, youth had been more supportive. See J. R. Berliner, 'The Harvard Project and the Soviet Interview Project', in F. J. Fleron Jr. and E. P. Hoffmann, Post-Communist Studies and Political Science. Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press 1993. pp. 177-82.
62. Twenty-four per cent in Czechoslovakia in 1983. Colin Sparks, A. Reading, Communism, Capitalism and the Mass Media. London: Sage 1998. p. 57. In Poland 43% of feature films in Poland were of foreign origin. In 1986, Hungary purchased over 600 Western TV programmes. In Hungary and Poland TV carried advertising. In Hungary there were no controls over videos and in 1988, some 200,000 were in use.
63. Colin Sparks, A. Reading, Communism, Capitalism and the Mass Media. Ibid. pp. 59-60.
64. A. Agangegyan, The Challenge: Economics of Perestroika. London: Hutchinson, 1987.
65. Speech of Ch. Aitmatov, Pervy s'ezd narodnykh deputatov SSSR: 25 maya- 9 iyunaya 1989g. Moscow: izd. Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, vol. 2. p. 290. I am indebted to Stephen White for finding the source of this speech for me.
66. The World Economic Forum, might be considered the political elite of this political class. (In Davos in January every year assemble the leaders of the world's largest 1,000 globalised companies and 33 national leaders, often including the President of the United States.) See internet under www.weforum.org.
67. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, World Investment Report 2000. Geneva, United Nations, 2000, p. 68.
68. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, World Investment Report 2002. United Nations, Geneva 2001. p. 275.
69. The Value Added Scoreboard. London: Department of Trade and Industry, 2002. p. 90.
70. World Investment Report 2002, p. 112.
71. World Investment Report Ibid. p. 86.
72. World Investment Report 2002, pp. 86-8.
73. Conduced in 1993, 116 members of the political elite in post between 1984 and 1991 were interviewed. These included members of the government elite holding the position of minister or equivalent and secretaries of the central committee of the CPSU and heads or deputy heads of its departments between 1985 and 1991. For details, see: David Lane, 'The Gorbachev Revolution: The Role of the Political Elite in Regime Disintegration'. Political Studies, vol. XLIV (1996), pp. 4-23.
74. Interviews carried out in spring and summer of 1994 with 100 of the Eltsin elite drawn from the government of the Russian Federation, law makers from the Russian Duma, and leaders of parties or groups elected to the Russian parliament for details see: David Lane, 'The Transformation of Russia: The Role of the Political Elite'. Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 48, no. 4, 1996, pp. 535-49.
75. See pp. 12-3.
76. See pp. 540-2.
77. European Union conditions are comprehensive and require great restructuring in the post-communist societies wishing to join. The acquis communautaire contains 31 chapters listing the laws, norms and standards of the EU. The general conditions specified by the European Union for future members to include: 'Stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities; The existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union; The ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union'. The administrative and judicial structures of countries intending to join must be such that 'European Community legislation transposed into national legislations [can be] implemented effectively'. European Union website: http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/intro/criteria. htm#Accessioncriter
78. See John Williamson, 'What Washington Means by Policy Reform', in John Williamson (Editor), Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990. esp. pp. 8-17.
79. IMF website. Newsbrief No. 99/21. April 28, 1999.
80. In Search of a Vision to Revitalize Reform, Address by Michel Camdessus, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Russia, June 16, 1999. IMF website. Russia: 16 June 1999.
81. President Eltsin, cited in speech to St Petersburg Economic Forum, Ibid.