[lbo-talk] Re: Consumer goods (Back to the USSR)

[Tahir Wood]

If such a country has not yet gone through a bourgeois revolution, 
how can this logically be described as a transition "from one stage 
of capitalism to another"? If it isn't capitalist to start with, but 
feudal, then it seems more accurate to describe this as a transition 
from feudalism to capitalism.
Bil Bartlett
Bracknell Tas

Bill, this would not be 100% correct either - there certainly was a measure of capitalist development despite the predominance of feudal relations in the countryside. In other words Russia was in a transitionary phase and this was reflected in the absolutist form of the state, as in a number of other countries, including other East European countries, as well as Germany to some extent. BTW we should not forget also that it was not only 'communism' that provided the impetus to completing this transition. Franco's project was identical and it is not inconceivable that he did it as well or better than communists in Spain would have done. So there were certainly alternatives to the bourgeois republic as a political form of modernisation.
Tahir