comunismul dinainte de 89 a fost de fapt o structura de clasa capitalista si feudala. cum e si azi A widespread conviction holds that one of the most extraordinary events of the 20th century was the establishment of communism first in Russia and then China. Its results included a protracted struggle between contending capitalist and communist worlds. While sometimes limited to ideological and rhetorical modes, that struggle also erupted in dangerous skirmishes in Berlin, sharp and bloody conflicts in Korea and Southeast Asia, and the threat of nuclear holocaust in the Cuban crisis. After so much sustained tension and conflict, the abrupt end of communism towards the close of the century was perhaps as unexpected as was communism’s beginning near the century’s start. We disagree with this conventional understanding of the last century’s tensions and conflicts between nations aligned in the contending capitalist and communist blocs. We find that the struggle did not pit capitalism against communism. This conclusion flows from the fact that communism – if understood as a distinct, non-capitalist class structure – was never a significant, nor a sustained part of the history of any of the nations conventionally labeled communist. Using the USSR and PRC as exemplars, we will argue below that those nations actually displayed capitalist and feudal, not communist, class structures. We do not doubt the sincere Marxist consciousness and anti-capitalist commitment of the revolutionaries who inaugurated the USSR and PRC. However, notwithstanding their battles to establish and defend socialism and to move toward communism, they could not and did not install communist class structures as the prevailing social organization of production in either country. Instead, they established particular state forms of capitalism and state forms of feudalism as means to improve their nations’ economic and military strength and their citizens’ standards of living. Thus, by the second half of the 20th century, the dominant conflicts occurred among: 1) mostly private capitalisms (the US, Western Europe, Japan, etc.), 2) a state capitalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and 3) first a Communism, Capitalism and Feudalism: Private versus State Forms. Satya Gabriel, Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA Stephen A. Resnick, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Massachusetts, USA Richard D. Wolff, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 13:23:48 +0000