The Primacy of Politics in Post-Revolutionary Societies

Abstract

The "actual socialist" societies are characterized by the "primacy of politics" rather than the "primacy of economics" of bourgeois societies. Ac tual socialist societies cannot be analyzed with the concept of "state capital ism, " since, even though the mode of production, built on the "old division of labor," may be capitalist, the mode of domination, the way in which political authority is exercised, legitimated, and reproduced, is not. Therefore, the actual socialist social formation is not reducible to a capitalist one. Domination in ac tual socialism is embodied in the bureaucracy, whose principle of subordina tion and pursuit of its own particular interests at the expense of the whole of so ciety's interests structure the social formation. The legitimation of this mode of domination is based upon its economic achievements. But the bureaucracy seeks to secure its own interests, which prevents economic success, even as the bureaucracy itself defines it. So, actual socialist societies are caught in a constant cycle of decentralizing (market) and recentralizing (plan) reforms. The workers need only to realize that this form of society does not satisfy their real needs, which are for liberation from subordination to hierarchy and particular interests, in order for them to change actual socialism.