Russia: From Workers' State to State Capitalism

An excellent compendium of essays chronicling the history of the Soviet Union from the earliest months of the Bolshevik Revolution under Lenin to the totalitarian system of Stalin. The most important contributor to this collection is Tony Cliff who coined the term 'State Capitalism,' which states that the Soviet Union under Stalin was not a workers' state, nor was it a degenerated workers' state as Trotsky would later describe it. Rather it was State Capitalist in that the Red Bureaucracy formed a distinctly separate class from the proletariat. Chris Harman also elaborates on the failure of the revolution, arguing that it was not an inherent outcome of the project but that external imperialist pressures and internal crises caused the collapse of socialism. Harman writes: "By 1927 little remained of the proletarian democracy of 1917. But this could hardly be blamed on those who took power in October. For during a long and bitter struggle against counter-revolution and foreign invasion the working class that had made the revolution was itself decimated. Cut off from its sources of raw materials, industry ground to a prolonged halt" (39). This is an excellent book detailing the complex transitions of the Soviet Union from the period of its inception all the way to its final collapse in 1990. However, some of the writing overlaps between essays and there a number of typos which need correcting.

This collection of essays is an excellent introduction to understanding two things about Russia: (1) the incredible accomplishments of the October 1917 revolution and (2) the degeneration that led to Stalinist dictatorship and why this degeneration occurred. The essays I'd recommend most highly are Ahmed Shawki's "80 Years Since The Russian Revolution" (for the accomplishments and why it should be looked to as a model) and Chris Harman's "How The Revolution Was Lost" (for the degeneration that occurred and an explanation of why). I highly recommend it to anyone fighting for social change who's willing to hear an argument for fighting for a fundamentally different kind of society--a society based on human need, not profits for the few.