Publisher's Synopsis
This is the first Autonomist Marxist book on the USSR. The various theories of Soviet capitalism are considered more comprehensively than in any previous work, and are shown to be inadequate insofar as they fail to demonstrate satisfactorily the predominance of the category of capital. A powerful new theory is developed which does precisely this, introducing the concepts of bureaucratic forms of both exchange-value and money. This constitutes an important contribution to the overall theoretical critique of capital. Attention is then turned to the class struggle. For the first time, the various æMarxistÆ theories of the USSR are systematically considered in relation to what they say about the working class and its struggle. In most cases this is dismally little, but special attention is paid to the strengths and weaknesses of Marxist work by Dunayevskaya, Castoriadis, Ticktin, and Chattopadhyay. A new understanding is then developed. Marx's concepts of the reproduction of labour-power and the relationship between small-scale circulation and capital accumulation, which Negri has shown to be of such importance, are taken up with particular gusto. This is the first time that the categories of relative and absolute surplus value, along with the distinction (within real subsumption) between productivity growth and labour intensification, have been considered in a Soviet context in specific relation to class antagonism.
