Class Struggles in the USSR, Second Period: 1923-1930

by Charles Bettelheim

Book by Bettelheim, Charles

Genres: Soviet Union, History, Nonfiction

640 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Economist and historian, founder of the Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization (CEMI : Centre pour l'Étude des Modes d'Industrialisation) at the Sorbonne), economic advisor to the governments of several developing countries during the period of decolonization. He was very influential in France's New Left, and considered one of "the most visible Marxists in the capitalist world" (Le Monde, April 4, 1972), in France as well as in Spain, Italy, Latin America, and India.

Reviews

[Julio Pino · Rating 4 out of 5]

By 1977 Charles Bettleheim was politically and literally a man without a socialist country. The one-time debate partner of Che Guevara and Ernest Mandel on how to build socialism in Cuba had backed the Gang of Four Maoist faction in China following Mao's death and lost. Perhaps that is why this second volume of his trilogy on the decrepitude of Soviet socialism is so sombre and pessimistic. Most observers of the Soviet scene see in these years of 1923-1930 the titanic battle between Stalin and Trotsky. Bettleheim goes after a different whale, how by the end of the Lenin era (1917-1923) the Bolshevik leadership had abandoned the political mobilization of the working class in favor of full-steam industrialization. The question of "socialism in one country" versus "world revolution" could not mask or overturn the political distance between the communists and the workers they claimed to lead. Soviet trade unions were now "conveyor belts" designed to increase productivity, not wage class struggle. A small elite presiding over the working class in a peasant majority country was bound to lose any hope in socialism, and the proletariat lose all hope in Marxism.

[Leon Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

O fim da NEP, a passagem da aliança operário-camponesa para a componente economicista do "mais possível de industrialização. Os germens da burocratização do estado Soviético a partir da revolução "feita por cima" e por fim, as necessárias alterações superestruturais sobre o marxismo com impacto sério no futuro da URSS. A obra de Bettelheim é importante para compreendermos como a luta de classes, verdadeiro motor da história, não terminou com a socialização da propriedade e fim da propriedade privada.