Ideological and Historical Background

The Soviet Union proclaims itself a socialist society and professes Marxism as its official ideology. Unfortunately, this does not tell us much about the kind of economic system the Russians have constructed or the kind of economic policy choices Soviet leaders have made. Marx’s analysis was mainly concerned with the future development of nineteenth-century industrial capitalist countries — not with the task of propelling a peasant society into the twentieth century. It is true that the Soviet leaders take great pains to interpret and justify their acts by appeal to Marx but, as I hope to demonstrate further on, this is mostly rationalization after the fact. The vague Marxist goal of achieving communism is something they can make ritual obeisance to, but their motivations and preoccupations grow out of more immediate problems. Thus, it is useful to reject the Marxian label as a point of departure and to formulate a new definition. The definition I propose is that the Soviet economy is totalitarianism harnessed to the task of rapid industrialization and economic growth.