One Hundred Years after the Russian Revolution: Looking Back and Looking Forward

ABSTRACT

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 holds important lessons for the socialist movement today. To learn these lessons, it is necessary to have an accurate picture of both the achievements and the failures of the effort to build socialism in the Soviet Union. Both the successes and the failures of that effort provide guidance for the continuing struggle to bring about a sustainable form of socialism in the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Russian Revolution
• socialism
• economic planning

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

David M. Kotz is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and distinguished professor in the School of Economics at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism (Harvard University Press, 2015); and Russia’s Path from Gorbachev to Putin: The Demise of the Soviet System and the New Russia, with Fred Weir (Routledge, 2007). He is co-editor of Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2010, with Terrence McDonough and Michael Reich).

Notes

1. A common diagnosis of the underlying problem of the Soviet planned economy points to a lack of incentives to work hard due to the limited pay differences and the high degree of material security. However, this view is based on ideology rather than any evidence about the performance of the Soviet economy. The data show that labor productivity grew rapidly for many decades prior to the slowdown in economic growth after 1975. See Kotz and Weir (2007, 44).

2. Gorbachev’s reform plan also included market elements that ran counter to the goal of democratizing the planning system. See Gorbachev (1987, 1988).

3. For a discussion of democratic participatory planning, see Devine (1988) and Kotz (2000, 2002, 2008).