POL 2103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Primitive Accumulation Of Capital, Planned Economy
20 Dec 2017
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Why devote time to marxism since the great experiment collapsed. What is alternative perspective: alternative means = being critical of the status quo. However: what is alternative depends on your perspective -> in fact it is you who decides what is the alternative, when/as you learn what is meant to see things from the other perspective. We have emphasized the point that theory matters because it is a tool that help us understand the world + explain how and why things happen. We all embrace theories that help us understand better. Soviet union never provided a model of the ideal marxist society. Soviet socialism was a bureaucratically controlled and planned economy that carried out the function of primitive accumulation and thus achieved rapid modernization. The state owned the means of production, which made some people think it must be socialist. The part and the bureaucracy owned that state by virtue of a dictatorial monopoly of political power.
