Introduction and Overview: Actors, Obstacles and Social Change in European and Asian State Capitalist Societies

Abstract

The social history of state capitalist analysis emerged at least four decades before the Bolshevik-led October Revolution. Despite this analytic tradition, epistemic communities using state capitalist analyses have interacted sporadically. Differences in language, locale and political commitments have contributed to the lack of sustained exchange. Sensitive to future social change in formerly Marxist-Leninist systems and elsewhere, contributors to this issue of Critical Sociology have applied complementary and competing state capitalist analyses to the pre-1917 Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China (PRC), post-communist Russia and the PRC in the reform period. The contributing authors are convinced that clarifying the legacy of state capitalist analysis is a prerequisite for the success of social movements seeking to realize their preferred futures in Asia, the Pacific, Europe, Africa and the Americas. Setting the stage, the introductory essay also suggests issues for continuing debate.