ANTH 425 Power and Change
20 October 2011
Identity politics: Micro and macro politics of race, class, gender
Read: Burawoy, Michael and Pavel Krotov (1992) "The Soviet Transition from Socialism to Capitalism: Worker Control and Economic Bargaining in the Wood Industry." American Sociological Review, 57(1):16-38. JSTOR Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2096142.
- relations of production versus relations in production
- capitalism versus communism versus state socialism
- capitalism: anarchy at level of relations of production leads to planning at level of relations in production
- state socialism: planning at level of relations of production leads to anarchy at level of relations in production
- discuss period of transition to capitalism in former Soviet Union
- (note research done in 1991, after several years of Gorbachev’s political and economic reforms known as perestroika and glasnost, and just before the dissolution of the USSR between August [failed coup by hardliners wanting to retain the USSR] and December [formal dissolution into separate republics]).
- argue that the practical patterns in place from the soviet era in terms of how supply and production actually take place have not disappeared in favour of capitalist mechanisms of supply and production;
- rather, in this transition period they have become exaggerated, leading to merchant capitalism instead of real, production capitalism
- what is merchant capitalism as opposed to production capitalism?
- how do they look at the politics on the shop floor as well as the politics in the sphere of supply of resources and sale of product, to analyse the overall structure of the economy?