[A-List] Resnick & Wolff on the USSR

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

John Gulick wrote:

the "state capitalism" thesis (advanced by both the News and Letters gang
and the Rethinking Marxism crowd, among others) is a sorry artifact of
political convenience and intellectual laziness. Basically, the line is
argued by the type of person who (for reasons good or bad) acknowledges that
the USSR was never a classless society, and at the same time (for reasons
good or bad) worries that acknowledging this will discredit socialism as
inherently authoritarian-bureaucratic, hence the not-so-clever device of
"state capitalism." But holy hell, how could the USSR be capitalist ? This
is an utterly absurd proposition. We could probably argue until we're blue
in the face about what the underlying organizational principle of a
capitalist economy and society are, but let it be said that a capitalist
economy and society requires some combination of the following institutional
features, none of which the USSR (to my admittedly scanty knowledge) had.

See http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2002w36/msg00035.htm

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Stan Goff also raised this book a while ago, but no one has come back to
provide a review of it, yet. Maybe I can encourage someone to do so. The
latest Monthly Review features a page advert for Resnick & Wolff's study of
the USSR, "Class Theory and History", featuring laudatory quotes from
prominent Marxist academics including Howard Sherman, Victor Lippit, Bertell
Ollman and Guglielmo Carchedi -- author of what I think must be the most
tedious and unnecessarily scholastic book I have ever read, cover to cover
("For Another Europe"). Carchedi describes it as "class analysis at its
best". Since "For Another Europe" was supposed to be a class analysis of
European integration, this endorsement ranks lowly on my scale, but Ollman's
strong recommendation makes me wonder. Has anyone here taken the plunge?

Michael