Russia in the Context of Global Transformations

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).

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


 8 Breaking the Tie with the Ancestral Human


 9 The Abstract Nature of the Being of the Individual


 10 The Negation of Subjecthood – the Rejection of the Idea of the Individual


 11 Culture as Market


 12 The Media Industry – the Production of the Private Person


 13 Conclusion


Part 4

The History of the Future

9 The End of the “End of the History”

 1 The Red and the Black: The Conflict Has Never Ended


 2 The Measure of the Socialisation of Capitalism: Growth — Contraction — Renewed Growth?


 3 Why Has the Liberal Project, Whose Triumph Was Celebrated Thirty Years Ago, Been Unable to Clinch its Final Victory?


 4 The “End of History” Had Come to an End


 5 In Search of Alternatives to Conservative Liberalism


 6 An era of Growing Economic, Social, Political and Ideological Conflicts Is Approaching


 7 Toward a Criticism of Our Critics




10 The Contradictions of Globalization and the Future of Alterglobalism

 1 From Neoliberal Globalization to a New Empire


 2 The Phenomenology of Alterglobalism


 3 The Technological, Economic and Social Preconditions for Alterglobalism


 4 Principles and Contradictions of the Alterglobalist Movement


 5 The Positive Program of Alterglobalism.




11 Communism as It Is Today

 1 Žižek from a Different Angle: Communism as a Question for Our Times (in Place of an Introduction)


 2 Towards a Practical Strategy for Abolishing Intellectual Private Property and the Exploitation of Creative Activity


 3 Associated Social Creativity: Communism as the Practice of Consciously Changing the World


 4 Beyond the State: Free, Voluntary Working Association as an Abstraction of the Practical and Timely Forms for Doing Away with the State


 5 Doing Away with Social Alienation: The Struggle for Nature, Society, Humanity and Culture as Communism


 6 Communism as Theory




Postscript


12 The Coronavirus is Stirring the Impulse to Communism

 1 Self-isolation as the Road to … Solidarity


 2 The Virus Is “Democratic” – Consequently, Social Justice Is to Everyone’s Advantage


 3 Closed Borders as a Prologue to … Internationalism




 Conclusion




Index