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Thesaurus for Chapter 14 - Chapter 14. The Socioeconomic System

Lecture



Это окончание невероятной информации про социально-экономическая система ссср.

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ever-greater challenge from "universal human," that is, properly communist, values and norms) — that "real socialism" proved unable to develop. It withered ("stagnation") and slid into crisis. When the "soft" model of socially oriented capitalism gave way in the 1980s to a "hard," aggressive right-liberal one, the challenge of the emerging information society became a practical problem, and the internal problems of "real socialism" reached a degree of acuteness that made it impossible to resolve them while preserving the former order — and then the choice arose: either overcoming the inadequate1 One of the paradoxes of this process is that the certain socialization and humanization of capitalism in the 1950s-60s was conditioned not only by the internal contradictions of this system, but also by the influence of the WSS. forms of the old system and movement in the direction of the "realm of freedom," or crisis.

The first option, owing to the aforementioned rigidity of the old system, turned out to be possible only through the destruction of these inadequate forms. And along with the collapse of the bureaucratic mechanism that had given integrity to the edifice of "real socialism," this order itself collapsed. As a result, "real socialism" died a death of its own making (though in every way hastened, moreover, by world corporate capital, which never ceased fighting the threat posed by an alternative society). "Real socialism" is a historically dead-end variant of a social system that stood at the beginning of a worldwide transitional period from the "realm of necessity" (in particular, capitalism) to the "realm of freedom" (communism); it is a transitional social order that goes beyond the bounds of capitalism, but does not constitute a stable model serving as a foundation for the subsequent movement toward communism. The instability of "real socialism" was determined not only by the fact that it combined heterogeneous socioeconomic elements, with the choice of models of transition depending, above all, on non-economic factors (as in any transitional order). The very existence of this order, the connection among its constituent heterogeneous elements, is determined to a greater degree by non-economic factors than by the factors of the natural-historical process of transformation of one socioeconomic system into another, owing to the insufficient development of the objective preconditions for such a transformation. At the same time, this system, for the first time in human history, generated on a mass scale sprouts of associated social creativity (the "living creativity of the people") and an ideal image (a theoretical-artistic ideal) of the future, of communism (the theory of socialism and Soviet culture, as ideal prototypes of the future, were perceived in precisely this way, in practice, in the real way of life of the majority of the population).

Thesaurus for Chapter 14

SOCIAL PROPERTY — a form of property that provides every member of society with equal opportunities to appropriate (for production and personal use) social wealth.

FREE ASSOCIATION — a socioeconomic form of connection among people, based on their voluntary union for the realization of common goals in the process of free activity.

SOCIALIZATION OF PRODUCTION — the growth of mutual dependence and interconnection among the economic units of industrial production under conditions of an increasingly complex division of labor.

DEFORMATION OF THE RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION OF SOCIALISM — the formation, owing to the insufficiency of socioeconomic preconditions, of such forms of movement of socialist relations of production as are inadequate to their content. Owing to the reverse effect, such forms also exert a distorting influence on the content of these relations themselves.

DEGENERATION OF THE RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION OF SOCIALISM — a change, resulting from the insufficiency of socioeconomic preconditions, in the content of socialist relations of production, up to and including their transformation into their own opposite.

"REAL SOCIALISM" — a historically dead-end variant of a social system that stood at the beginning of a worldwide transitional period from the "realm of necessity" (in particular, capitalism) to the "realm of freedom" (communism); a transitional social order that goes beyond the bounds of capitalism, but does not constitute a stable model serving as a foundation for the subsequent movement toward communism.

Self-Check Questions

  • 14.1. Characterize the range of principal positions on the problem of the nature of the economic system of "real socialism."
  • 14.2. Compare the theoretical propositions about the economic order of the USSR with the actual realization of these theoretical premises.
  • 14.3. Give a characterization of the various aspects of the system of socioeconomic relations of "real socialism" along four dimensions (allocation of resources, relations of appropriation, distribution of income, reproduction).
  • 14.4. What is the essence of the "deformations of socialism" hypothesis? What are its heuristic merits and shortcomings from the standpoint of characterizing the World System of Socialism (WSS)?
  • 14.5. Name the arguments of proponents of the view that socialism in the USSR represented a "zigzag of history." Also give the counterarguments of their opponents.
  • 14.6. Characterize the principal contradictions of the "real socialism" system in the USSR.
  • 14.7. What are the arguments of proponents of the view of "real socialism" as a special stage of the historical process of transition from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm of freedom"?

Продолжение:


Часть 1 Chapter 14. The Socioeconomic System of the USSR: Nature, Causes of Emergence, and Crisis
Часть 2 Thesaurus for Chapter 14 - Chapter 14. The Socioeconomic System

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Lectures and tutorial on "Political economy (political economy)"

Terms: Political economy (political economy)