Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:51:45.400Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Soviet ‘Zeitgeist’: Critique of the Post-Industrial Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Emil Bej*
Affiliation:
Shippensburg State College

Extract

The Soviet discovery of the approach of postindustrial society is not an incidental one. Since converging trends are observed in both capitalist and communist economic systems, the inclusion of macroplanning and more significant activity of the public sector could not be left unnoticed by the Soviet authors. For if convergence is viewed as a “capitalist policy” toward integration, postindustrialism stresses behaviorism with an accent on the consumer demand whose outlook became subject to extended modernization and technical acceptance of societal transformation. Soviet observers claim that in the capitalist environment, objective economic principles are replaced by purely biological determinants, because technocracy and consumerism are the very functional representatives of oncoming social values. Parenthetically then, planning and welfare-state designs are modes to “socialize” capitalism, since the two systems, as western economists claim, possess common values in terms of dynamic growth with no particular doctrine of implementation. Therefore, capitalism not only enforced hybridization of two ideologies, it became a virtual variant of socialism, converging around an industrial nucleus with increased participation of the public sector. Thus, capitalist convergence and revisionism in certain socialist countries are inbred, because by recognizing certain Marxian truisms but by ignoring class struggle, western societies approximate reinterpretation of Marx in the eastern bloc. The latter is a direct contradiction of the Soviet aim of establishing a classless, community-oriented society.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe, 1978 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Kvasniuk, B., “Krytyka ‘industrialnoi systemy’ Dz. Kenneta Gelbraita,” Ekonomika Radianskoi Ukrainy (hereafter ERU and issue), Dec. 1971, p. 88.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. 89, Leonenko, P. and Petrovska, N., “Nespromozhnist' antymark-systs'koho ototozhennia sotsialistychnoho planuvannia i kapitalistychnoho prohramuvannia,” ERU, April 1976, pp. 3738.Google Scholar

3. Hession, Charles H., John Kenneth Galbraith and His Critics (New York: Mentor Books), 1972), pp. 3637.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., p. 39.Google Scholar

5. Kvasniuk, B., “Krytyka,” p. 90; P. Pochkin, G. Shpylko, “Tekhnicheskii progress kak faktor ekonomichoskogo rosta v buzhuaznykh teoriakh i modelakh,” Planovoe Khoziaistvo (hereafter PKh and issue), June 1970, pp. 7879.Google Scholar

6. Nove, Alec, The Soviet Economy, rev. ed. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), p. 89; Walter Adams, “The Military-industrial Complex and the New Industrial State,” AER, May 1968, pp. 652-56.Google Scholar

7. Veselaho, V.V.Ekonomichni kontseptsii' zakhidnonimetskoi ‘sovietolohii’.” Kiev: KDU , 1970, pp. 9192; Perfilyev, M. Soviet Democracy and Bourgeois Sovietology. (Moscow: Progress Publishers,) pp. 135-137; A. Buchholz, Neue Wege Sowjetischen Bildung und Wissenschaft: Methodische und Organizatorische Probleme. (Koeln, 1963), p. 861.Google Scholar

Buchholz, A., a West German economist, cannot visualize the socialist system without “absolute determinism.” The latter leads to comprehensive planning and reliance on forces of science and technological development.Google Scholar

8. Tsaga, V., “Protiv ‘tekhnokratizma’ i ‘potrebitelskoi’ kontseptsii,” Voprosy Ekonomiki (hereinafter VE and issue), March 1972, p. 100; A. Samsin, “Novyi sotsializm Dz. Gelbreita modernogo burzhuaznogo reformizma,” PKh, Jan. 1975, p. 99; N. Klimov, “Sovremennaia nauchno-tekhnicheskaia revolutsia i ee sotsialno-ekonomicheskie posledstvia.” PKh, Feb. 1977, p. 123.Google Scholar

Klimov claims that the results of automation are universal. Thus automation lowers costs of new production and increases productivity. It also facilitates the proper territorial division of labor and efforts, and develops concern over qualitative and quantitative parameters. Contradictions with Tsaga are glaring indeed.Google Scholar

9. Samsin, A., “Novyi sotsializm,” p. 89; Tsaga, V. op. cit., p. 100.Google Scholar

10. Tsaga, V. op. cit., pp. 100103; I. Dvorkin, “Nauchno-tekhnicheskaia revolutsia i burzhuaznye ekonomicheskie teorii sotsializma,” VE Aug. 1969, pp. 67-69.Google Scholar

11. Bell, Daniel, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1973), p. 127; M. Donald Hancock and Gideon Sjoberg, Politics in the Post-Welfare State (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 72-86; V.M. Chuguenko, Proizvodstvo, demokratia, ideologicheskaia bor'ba (Moscow: “Mysl'”, 1976), p. 107.Google Scholar

By implanting “firm patriotism,” Chuguenko claims, bourgeois society intends to estrange workers from supraclass associations in order to divide the proletariat, limit its Weltanschauung, and minimize the enforcement of class solidarity.Google Scholar

12. Hancock, M. Donald and Sjoberg, Gideon, Post-Welfare State, p. 3.Google Scholar

13. Kvasniuk, B., “Krytyka,” p. 87.Google Scholar

14. Tsaga, V., op. cit., pp. 102103.Google Scholar

15. Bell, Daniel, Post-Industrial Society, p. 49; Elliot, John E. and Cownie, John, Competing Philosophies in American Political Economics. (Pacific Palisades, CA: Goodyear Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), pp. 318-29.Google Scholar

16. Tourain, Alain, The Post-Industrial Society (New York: Random House), 1971), p. 9.Google Scholar

17. Samsin, A., “Obshchestvo massovogo potreblenia,” PKh, Sept. 1974, p. 108.Google Scholar

18. Sdobnikov, Yu., Socialism and Capitalism: Score and Prospects (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), pp. 145-48; Robert L. Heilbronner, Business Civilization in Decline (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1976), pp. 74-78; V.G. Afanasiev, Nauchnoe upravlenie obshchestvom (Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1973), pp. 324-27.Google Scholar

Sdobnikov thinks that the doctrine of the “affluent society” pervades the capitalist world. It is conspicuous for the principal sectors in terms of distribution and redistribution of the national income, “diffusion” of property, sociopsychological relations such as “humanization” of labor and “social partnership.” However, behind the facade there exists diagonal paternalism and illusory welfare.Google Scholar

19. Ohanian, H., “Vykryttia psevdoteorii ‘sotsialnoi harmonii’ v sviti kapitalu,” ERU, Feb. 1973, p. 94.Google Scholar

20. Current Digest of the Soviet Press (Hereinafter CDSP and issue), Nov. 3, 1976, pp. 910 and Dec. 22, 1976, pp. 15 and 27.Google Scholar

21. Dvorkin, V., op. cit., pp. 6668; Yu. Sdobnikov, Socialism and Capitalism, pp. 148-49.Google Scholar

22. Kornienko, V., “Pro nespromozhnist' burzhuaznykh kontseptsii kapitalistychnoi suspilnoi vlasnosti,” ERU, Dec. 1975, p. 80; Daniel Bell, Post-Industrial Society, p. 159.Google Scholar

23. Dvorkin, V., op. cit., pp. 6668.Google Scholar

24. Farukshyn, M. Kh.Sotsialisticheskaia demokratia i burzhuaznaia ‘sovietologia’” (Kazan: Kazan University Publishing House, 1976), p. 153.Google Scholar

25. Vasyleva, R., “Krytyka suchasnykh burzhuaznykh ta revizionistychnykh ‘modelei sotsializmu’,” ERU, June 1971, pp. 5960; Heilbronner, R.L., Business Civilization, pp. 74-78.Google Scholar

26. Vasyleva, R., “Krytyka,” pp. 5760; Elliott, John E. and Cownie, John, Competing Philosophies, pp. 320-29.Google Scholar

27. Zhilin, Yu., “Nekotorye problemy bor'by protiv revizionizma na sovremennom etape,” Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnoe otnoshenia (hereinafter MEMO and issue), Aug. 1970, pp. 57.Google Scholar

28. Zhilin, Yu., op. cit., Sept. 1970, p. 9.Google Scholar

29. Howard, M.C. and King, J.E., The Political Economy of Marx (Burnt Hill, Essex, England: Longman Group, Ltd., 1975), pp. 1521, 243-47.Google Scholar

30. Nesterenko, O.O. and Vlasov, I.H., eds., Krytyka burzhuaznykh, reformistskykh i revizionistychnykh ekonomichnykh teorii (Kiev: AN URSR, 1963), pp. 108-15.Google Scholar

31. Samsin, A., “Obshchestvo …”, PKh, Sept. 1974, p. 107.Google Scholar

32. CDSP, May 18, 1977, p. 18.Google Scholar

33. Ordukhanov, A., “O sovremennykh ekonomicheskikh modelakh sotsializma,” PKh, Dec. 1969, pp. 22-23; T. Abramishvili, “Burzhuaznye teorii realizatsii i marketing,” MEMO, Dec. 1971, pp. 29-31; V. Osadchaia, “Sushchnost' i protivorechie neokeynsianskoi doktriny,” MEMO, Oct. 1971, pp. 64-66.Google Scholar