Soviet Communism And The Socialist Vision

Perhaps the sharpest and most useful criti-cism of Soviet communism has come from Left socialist sources. The essays in this collection are unified by an abiding faith in the value of social change and political revolution, as well as a shared belief that the Soviet Union has fallen drastically short of its own promissory notes delivered by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This volume, the first in a series published under the direction of New Politics magazine, takes up the intimacies of Soviet society--its legal practices, its party organization, its eco-nomic planning techniques--with a devastat-ing forthrightness that is not to be found in any other single source. The writings draw heavily from scholarly sources in Europe that provide perspectives toward Soviet so-ciety uncluttered by the usual ideological gambits found in many books published in this- country, and unbiased by a reliance on purely secondary sources. For all who areinterested in the Soviet communist regime yesterday, today and tomorrow, this bookwill be crucial.

It is aimed at those, especially young people, who have just become involved politically, as well as those engaged in single issue movements, having come across the word 'socialism' and want to know more about it. It is not a detailed text book on the subject. The author was a full-time trade union official most of his working life (he is now retired) and was also involved politically on the left, so is able to write with some experience and knowledge on the subject.The book opens with an attempt to describe capitalism as it is now, then deals with the basic ideas of socialism. It then takes the reader more deeply into the politics and economics of socialism from a Marxist standpoint. The remaining chapters deal with various social problems of today, including the growing gap between rich and poor and between rich and poor nations, feminism, racism, democracy, freedom and liberty under socialism, etc. It considers the road to socialism in the light of past attempts to set up socialist regimes, e.g. the Paris Commune of 1870-71 and the Russian Revolution from 1917 to the collapse of the Soviet system in 1989-91.It has a chapter on the history of the idea of socialism-communism in Britain and Europe. It also deals with the present and the future of the several new Latin American left-wing regimes and concludes with a discussion of the situation in Britain today in the light of the 'New' Labour government's swing to the right. It arrives at a conclusion that the future of socialism in Britain - if it has a future at all - lies with ordinary people and their battle for political and economic democracy, peace, liberty and justice.

Perhaps the sharpest and most useful criti-cism of Soviet communism has come from Left socialist sources. The essays in this collection are unified by an abiding faith in the value of social change and political revolution, as well as a shared belief that the Soviet Union has fallen drastically short of its own promissory notes delivered by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This volume, the first in a series published under the direction of New Politics magazine, takes up the intimacies of Soviet society--its legal practices, its party organization, its eco-nomic planning techniques--with a devastat-ing forthrightness that is not to be found in any other single source. The writings draw heavily from scholarly sources in Europe that provide perspectives toward Soviet so-ciety uncluttered by the usual ideological gambits found in many books published in this- country, and unbiased by a reliance on purely secondary sources. For all who areinterested in the Soviet communist regime yesterday, today and tomorrow, this bookwill be crucial.

Writing this book has been a rewarding but challenging experience. Along the way I• have had the helpful comments and criticisms of a number of friends and colleagues. Pat Maus, Susanna Frenkel, Kit Christensen, and Carl Ross read the entire manuscript. Steve Chilton, Milan Kovacovic, and .Marina Rumyantseva read parts of it. They and the reviewers for Westview Press have weeded out many errors and forced me to think through a number of difficult points. The errors and confusions that remain do so in spite of their best efforts. I thank them all. I would also like to thank Spencer Carr of Westview Press for his support of this project and for his editorial suggestions, which resulted in major improvements. Finally, thanks to Jean Vileta for her editorial assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication.

Neither of the founders and none of the subsequent leaders of the Communist movement ever wrote a full analysis of what he expected the future society to be. Throughout the vast literature of Marxism there is nothing in general or detail which devotes itself to this goal as such. There are several obvious reasons for this: Marxists, having excoriated utopian, Le. , pre-Marxist, socialism for its idealism and chimeras, for not being based on the only scientific analysis of society, historical materialism, have sedulously avoided going beyond that analysis themselves. The dynamic of this materialism is, consistently, self-restrictive, non-mechanistic, zeitgebunden; it develops the past in terms of actions and counteractions in social time, and sees naturallaw at work in each stage of social-economic organization - Le. , in history. It sees the exhaustion of an era in the completion of its logic and the unconscious creation of its successor. Therefore the discarding of capi talism as historically depleted and the rise of socialism-communism as the next stage, the next logic and law of economic development, are forecast. This is the given, the premise, the Naturnotwendigkeit of material society, the reason of social efficiency and of course one of the data of capitalism. According to E. H.

Toward Soviet America is a book written by Communist Party, USA Chairman William Z. Foster, in 1932. The book documented the rise of socialism in the Soviet Union, the crisis facing capitalism, the need for revolution, and a vision of what a socialist society would be like. The book also attacks social-democrats and liberals calling them "Social Fascists" because they seek to give the masses concessions in order to calm them and prevent communist revolution.