Description
Aakar Books What Was Built And What Failed In The Soviet Union by Randhir Singh
About the Book: What was Built and What Failed in the Soviet Union Prof. Randhir Singh's Crisis of Socialism- Notes in Defence of aCommitment, dealing with the why and how of the collapse of SovietUnion's 'acyually existing socialism' ,its implications and thequestion of socialism in our time and recognized as a pioneeringwork- " One of the most important, if not the most important bookwe have read" , "a key to all that is going on in our world today", "if there were a required reading list for the US left, thisshould be on it", and so on-is now being published in six separatevolumes. This volume deals with the failed revolutionary experiment inthe Soviet Union. The overriding concern is that in the absence ofa Marxist explanation of what has happened in the erstwhile SovietUnion, it is socialism's enemies explanation-'socialism hasfailed', 'Marxism is dead',etc.-which will continue to prevail. It is argued that instead of socialism being attempted on a baseprovided by the productive achievements of capitalism as visualizedin Marx's main theory on the subject a single backward country wascalled upon to attempt it, and do so in the midst of a most hostileglobally dominant capitalism which did not allow the Soviet Union asingle day of peace during its seventy odd years of existence.Lenin recognized the predicament and, possibly, had the potentialto make a creative Marxist response to this unanticipatedsituation. 'Struggle and struggle alone decides, how far we shalladvance', he had insisted. But the struggle, especially afterLenin's early departure, was not adequate enough. Logic ofbackwardness, compulsions of sheer survival, scientistic Marxismand economism in theory ('theory of production forces'), flaws inthe character of men who led, all taking their toll, what got builtwas grievously deformed socialism which, over time, degeneratedinto a sui generic exploitative system, that ultimately collapsed.As the author puts it: 'Despite its undoubted achievements, thesyst