Marxism and the Socialist Transition

Roberto Sáenz is an Argentinian militant, writer and Marxist theorist. He is the Founder and leader of the Nuevo MAS of Argentina and the International Current Socialism or Barbarism. He is a son of Holocaust survivors who dedicated his work to the study of the 20th century, especially the process of workers’ revolution and bureaucratic counter revolution.

• Preface Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 1 Marx and Stalinism 2 Bureaucratisation: An Unforeseen Phenomenon 3 Bureaucracy and Statised Ownership 4 A Historically Original Revolution 5 The Jacobin Element in the Revolutionary Party Part 1 State, Exploitation and Alienation 2 The Theory of the State in Classical Marxism 1 The State in Marx and Engels: Class Expression and Separate Form 2 The Historically Shifting Relations between State and Society 3 State and Political Regime under Capitalism and the Transition 4 Proletarian Dictatorship as Semi-state (Lenin) 3 Alienation, Fetishism and the Socialist Transition 1 Alienation 2 Fetishism 3 Althusser ‘corrects’ Marx 4 An Egalitarian Freedom 5 Bread and Freedom Part 2 Revolution, Bureaucracy and Statised Ownership 4 The USSR’s Experience: From Revolution to Bureaucratisation 1 A ‘state with bureaucratic deformations’ 2 A State that Does Not Wither Away 3 ‘Bureaucratic vermicelli’ 4 From Revolutionary Politics to Bureaucratic Administration 5 Politics and Administration; Society and Bureaucracy 5 The Bureaucracy as a ‘Political Class’ 1 Christian Rakovsky: A New Definition for a New Phenomenon 2 A Non-schematic Marxist Assessment of Bureaucracy 3 The Statisation of the Categories of Political Economy 4 Stalinism: An Anti-socialist Bureaucratic Regime 6 Ownership in the Socialist Transition 1 Ownership in General 2 An Excursus on Private Ownership as an Absolute Form 3 Statised Ownership as a Political-economic Form 4 Right, Ownership and the Law of Value 5 From the Ruling over People to the Administration of Things Part 3 The Theory of Revolution After Bureaucratisation 7 Methodological Notes on Stalinist Forced Collectivisation 1 An Anti-socialist Collectivisation 2 Socialist Modes of Activity 3 An Attack on the Entire Peasantry 4 The Dismantling of Bourgeois-democratic Revolution Conquests 5 Bastard Forms of State Ownership 8 A Critique of ‘Objective Socialist’ Revolutions 1 An Unexpected Phenomenon 2 Tasks, Subjects and Methods in the Socialist Revolution 3 The False Equation of Anti-capitalism and Socialism (before and after the Post-war Period) Part 4 Party and Revolution 9 The Historical Specificity of the Socialist Revolution 1 A Universal Class: General Grounds 2 A Critique and Vindication of the French Revolution 3 Post-war Anti-capitalist Revolutions 4 An Outline of Anti-Stalinist Revolutions Post-war 10 The Working Class in Power 1 The Elevation of the Working Class to Historical Class 2 Revolution as the Work of the Great Masses 3 Strategy and Party 4 Dual Power, Party and ‘Jacobinism’ in the Revolution Bibliography Index