Re: AUT: State capitalism?

["Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 24. juli 2002 17.13
Subject: Re: AUT: State capitalism?

> I know work has been done about the role of legal systems in constituting
> the capital relations (Linebaugh's _London Hanged_ which I still haven't
> tracked down but of which I've heard a lot, Federici's work on witch-hunts
> could be understood under this heading as well).
> Is anyone aware of research done on the 'justice' systems of the various
> so-called socialist states, particularly in relation to constituting
capital
> relations?

Interesting question. I guess you are referring to criminal justice
in a more traditonal sense of the term, and not more specifically
to the part of the justice system more directly related to labour
discipline and economically coercion in general. On the later
much has been written, though I am not aware that any monograph
on labour disicipline in the Soviet Union, for instance.And am not
very surprised. (I have not followed much what has been published in
the last ten years. But I am pretty sure that this still holds true.) Of
course, much of this very much overlapped.  As such, an approach
similar to Peter Linebaugh's "London Hanged" could have been
very interesting.
        Apart from what has been written here and there about the
subject, the most relevant book I might think about her and now
in this context (there may be many others that I am unaware of,
in Russian for instance) probably is "And Now My Soul Is Hardened:
Abonded Children in Soviet Russia 1918-1930" by Alan M. Ball.
It is a worth reading, in all circumstances.

What really would have been welcomed at this stage is something
like Howard Zinns "A People History of the United States". 99 %
of marxist literature on the history of the late soviet union is of
course almost worthless, being both apologists and wholly focused
on the state affairs and the internal disputes within that sphere.
Bourgeois history at its worst, that is.

In any circumstances, more relevant than what the Soviet Union
was, beyond being a class society,  is still why the revolution so
terrible failed. Still relevant, even if the world has changed much
since then.

(I have not read _The Invention of Capitalism_ by Michael Perelman)

Harald



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