Class Theory and History takes an ambitious and ground-breaking look at the entire history of the Soviet Union and presents a new kind of analysis of the history of the USSR: examining its birth, evolution, and death in class terms. Utilizing the class analytics they have developed over the last three decades, resnick and Wolff formulate the most fully developed economic theory of communism now available, and use that theory to answer the question: did communism ever exist in the USSR and if so, where, why and for how long? Their initial, and controversial, conclusion: Soviet industry never established a communist class structure. This conclusion then leads to the hypothesis that the USSR and provate capitalism in the United States to discuss the future of private capitalism, state capitalism and communism.

Stephen A. Resnick, Richard D. Wolff

Part 1 Communism; Chapter 1 A General Class Theory; Chapter 2 The Many Forms of Communism; Part 2 State Capitalism; Chapter 3 A Class Theory of State Capitalism; Chapter 4 Debates over State Capitalism; Part 3 The Rise and Fall of the USSR; Chapter 5 Class Structures and Tensions before 1917; Chapter 6 Revolution, War Communism, and the Aftermath; Chapter 7 Revolution, Class, and the Soviet Household; Chapter 8 The New Economic Policies of the 1920s; Chapter 9 The Transformations of the 1930s; Chapter 10 Class Contradictions and the Collapse;