Aleksandr Buzgalin has published monographs and numerous articles on the capitalist and socialist economic systems, including Twenty-First-Century Capital (with co-author Andrey Kolganov).

Lyudmila Bulavka-Buzgalina has published monographs and numerous articles on Soviet culture, including The Phenomenon of Soviet Culture.

Andrey Kolganov is Head of the Laboratory for Comparative Studies of Socio-Economic Systems at Lomonosov Moscow State University. Among his recent publications on capitalist and socialist economic systems is Twenty-First-Century Capital (with co-author Aleksandr Buzgalin).

Texte du rabat

In Russia in the Context of Global Transformations (Capitalism and Communism, Culture and Revolution) the authors focus on the dramatic changes in Russia’s socio-economic system over the past hundred years.

The contradictions of Russia’s triumphs and tragedies are studied in connection with shifts in the world economic system.

Basing themselves on the views of the Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism, the authors show the causes and consequences of the main shifts in Russia’s development during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Topics addressed include the October Revolution, the contradictions of post-revolutionary development, the disintegration of the USSR, the collapse and stagnation during the post-USSR period and the prospects for overcoming contemporary problems.

Contenu

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Diagrams, Figures and Tables

Introduction How Should the Global Transition Be Understood? Toward a Methodology of the Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism
1 Marxism in Post-Soviet Russia: From Orthodoxy to the Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism
1.1 Russia Since 2000: The Spectre of Marxist Studies

1.2 The Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism: An Introduction

2 Obsolete Postmodernism: The Dialectics of Non-linear, Multi-scenario Social Transformations
2.1 On Some of the Reasons for “Forgetting” Dialectics

2.2 New Answers to the Challenges of new Problems: The Dialectics of the Decline and Genesis of Social Systems

3 Beyond the “Pyatichlenka” and “The Collapse of Civilisations”: The Social Creativity of Free Association vs. Activism
3.1 Beyond the Realm of Economic Necessity: The Dialectics of Progress/Regression

3.2 The Individual in History: The Activism of Agents of Progress and Regression

Part 1
Context: Culture and Revolution
1 Revolution From October 1917 Towards Communism
1 Toward a Theory of Communist Revolution: Some Additions to the Traditional Positions of Marx and Lenin

2 Revolution as the Practice of Social Creativity: The Masses and the Intelligentsia, the Social Creator and the Boor

3 The October Revolution: Practice as the Impulse for the Development of Theory

2 Culture Bakhtin and Dialectics
1 Why Bakhtin?

2 The World of Bakhtin: Prologue

3 Dialectics as the Basis of Bakhtin’s World

4 Dialogue: A Window into the World of Collaborative Creativity

5 Vivat Carnival!

6 Why do they Need Bakhtin?

7 Bakhtin Versus Post-modernism: Integrity and Responsible Activity

8 Bakhtin Versus Post-modernism: “Oneness” and the “Philosophy of the Deed”

9 Bakhtin Versus Post-modernism: Humanism

10 Bakhtin Versus Post-modernism: Epistemology

11 Bakhtin Versus Post-modernism: Historicism

3 Revolution and Culture Bakhtin, Mayakovsky and Lenin
1 Revealing the Concept (in Place of a Foreword)

2 Culture as Revolution: Creation vs. Alienation. Bakhtin and Lenin

3 Revolution as Culture: The Proletkult and/or Soviet Culture. Lenin and Mayakovsky

4 P.S. Revolution, that Gives Birth to Culture: The Renaissance, the ussr and the End of the “End of History” (in Place of a Conclusion)

Part 2
ussr : Birth, Death and Future
4 The Birth Lenin
1 Creating the Impossible: Lessons of Lenin’s Legacy (to Mark the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of V.I. Ulyanov-Lenin)

2 But at the Same Time as the Revolution was Inevitable, it Lacked Sufficient Preconditions

5 Death The Contradictions of the System and the Lessons of its Collapse
1 Why and How the ussr Departed from the Scene: Toward a Systematisation of the Main Approaches

2 The Path to the “Realm of Freedom”, or the Red Line of History: A Theoretical-Methodological Interpretation

3 The ussr : The Hypothesis of Mutant Socialism

4 The Social Forces of Development and the Downfall of the ussr : The Creators of the Future, the “Red” Bureaucracy and Philistinism

5 The Immediate Reason for the Demise of the ussr : The Strengthening and Subsequent Degeneration of the “Red” Bureaucracy as the Social Creativity of the Masses Expired

6 The Underlying Causes of the Downfall of the ussr

7 The Degradation of the “Red Line”, and the Reasons for the Disintegration of the ussr

8 The Tragedy of Socialism

6 The Future Soviet Culture and its Renaissance
1 The Question of Subjecthood

2 The Renaissance and Soviet Culture: Fundamental Traits

3 The Renaissance and Soviet Culture: Contradictions in Common

Part 3
Russia- xxi : Why Stagnation?
7 Political Economy The Jurassic Park of Russian Capitalism
1 The Russian Market: Those Who Win Are Not the Best Runners, but the Best Sack-Racers

2 The Owners of Russia: the Anatomy of the “Dinosaurs” Property Relations and Rights: The Peculiarities of Russia

3 Clan-Corporate Groups: Their Structure and Channels of Power

4 The Process of Reproduction in Russia: How Capital Prefers to Parasitise Social and Natural Resources, and Acts as a Brake on Social Development

5 The Parasitising of Natural Rent and the Ageing of Fixed Capital

6 Social Obstacles to the Transition to an Intensive Type of Reproduction

8 Culture The Destruction of Individuality in a World of Simulacra
1 Introduction

2 Negation as a Simulacrum of Transition

3 Culture as Market

4 The Present-Day Basis of Our Existence Has Already Exhausted Itself

5 Cultures and the Market: What Relations between Them Are Possible?

6 Simulative Consumption

7 Culture as an Industry of Alienation