New Directions in Soviet Social Thought: An Anthology

An Anthology

Murray Yanowitch, A. Schultz, M. Vale

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781315492797
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The essays in this volume illustrate the kind of expansionary logic that has characterized Soviet reformist thinking in the social sciences in the 1980s. The themes discussed show the wide-ranging and multidisciplinary nature of reformist currents in the Soviet Union.

III. Economic Sociology and the Issue of “Social Justice”

10. The Subject Matter of Economic Sociology

T. I. ZASLAVSKAIA and R. V. RYVKINA

“In our social development we have now come to a historical watershed, when profound quanlitative changes in the forces of production and, accordingly, an improvement in the relations of production have not only been placed on the order of the day, but have also become inevitable…. Changes in people’s consciousness, in all those forms of social life that we are accustomed to calling the superstructure, should also occur in close interrelationship with this.”

Materials of the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee,
June 14–15, 1983 [in Russian] (Moscow, 1983), p. 9.

Definition of the problem

Economic sociology is a scientific discipline that studies the laws of economic life and the economic development of society using the methods and categories of sociology. The historical roots of this discipline are extremely deep, given the close relationship between the economic and social aspects of society. Attempts to interpret economic development from the standpoint of the social relations reflected in it are to be found in pre-Marxist science as well, although the final methodology of this approach was developed by the classics of Marxism-Leninism. We might mention some of the methodological principles of analysis of the capitalist economy used by Marx and Engels, principles that reflect an orientation toward clarifying the essence of the social relations between the classes and groups entering into them.

The first principle involves the examination of the laws of economic development from the standpoint of the interests, activity, and relations of classes occupying different (including opposing) positions in the system of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of the social product. According to Marxist theory, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which is based on an opposition of class interests with regard to property relations in the means of production, and accordingly, political power, is the pivot of the social mechanism of development of a capitalist economy.¹

The second principle applied in the social approach of Marxism to an analysis of the economy focuses on the study of the specific position of social classes, strata, and groups. Marx and Engels provided an exhaustive description of the socioeconomic position of the working class and its various strata. Numerous works by the founders of Marxism demonstrate the relationship of this class to the ownership of the means of production, its place in the political system of capitalist society, the level and sources of its income, and its housing and social conditions.² This comprehensive analysis of the position of the proletariat was the basis on which the classics of Marxism drew the conclusion that capitalism confronted the working class with the necessity of taking state power in order to reorganize the system of social relations. The same approach was applied by Lenin in his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia to study the process of stratification of the peasantry. After a careful analysis of the specific positions of the different strata of the peasantry, Lenin came to the conclusion that within this class a capitalist stratum and a proletarian stratum were taking shape and that, consequently, Russia had already entered the path of capitalist development despite assertions of the Populists to the contrary.

The third methodological principle of the Marxist approach to an analysis of the economy involves the idea that the political factor in economic development, i.e., the role that the state plays in it, should be taken into account. Marx and Engels thoroughly explored the role of the bourgeois state in regulating the position of the working class and the conditions under which its labor was utilized. They also analyzed theoretically the role of the proletarian state in the development of the communist mode of production, and the formation of a new system of production relations.³ Lenin’s study State and Revolution is a brilliant continuation and further development of these ideas.

These methodological principles of analyzing the economy were used widely by Lenin in his writings summing up the initial experiences of building socialism.⁴ Thus, for example, in examining the question of the most appropriate methods for moving from petty commodity production in agriculture to cooperative enterprises under the specific conditions of Russia in the 1920s, Lenin started out from social relations and social factors. For this reason he was not in favor of “total” socialization of the means of production, or the accelerated recruitment of peasants into cooperative production. As we know, Lenin enjoined the party to exercise extreme caution on this question, to take into account the characteristics of the dual position of the peasantry as both toiler and property owner at the same time, to penetrate into its social psychology, and to put to the practical test and approval those forms of socialization of production that were compatible with keeping some means of production under private ownership in the very first stages.

From what we have said it is clear that an analysis of economic phenomena and processes that views them as the result of the activity of social groups occupying different positions in society and having different interests is a characteristic feature of Marxism. But the growing specialization of the various disciplines in the social sciences, which is not always compensated by their later convergence, has had an effect on the development of modern Marxist social science. In particular, sociology began to develop once again in the USSR in the early 1960s after a long interruption, and its key concern was the study of the social structure of society and its elements, i.e., classes, strata, and groups, as well as the relations binding them together. The development of an empirical sociology made it possible to raise the study of the social structure of society to a new qualitative level, but at the same time it also became divorced somewhat from the study of economic relations.

Of course sociology studies a broad range of phenomena having to do with the economy. Some examples include the attitude of workers to work, their participation in management, the migration and turnover of cadres, choice of occupation, social problems of education, etc. Scientific disciplines such as the sociology of labor, industrial sociology, organizational sociology, etc., study these and similar phenomena. Working together with the corresponding disciplines in economics, these disciplines have made a substantial contribution to improving social relations under socialism.

However, not one of these sciences has set itself the goal of analyzing the development of the economy as a social process reflecting the specific behavior and interaction of classes, strata, and groups in Soviet society. But the need for such an analysis is very perceptible, and is associated with the generally recognized growth of the role of the “human factor” in the development of production, the extremely strong dependence of the economic development of society on social factors, and of the social position of classes and groups on the effectiveness of the economy. In his speech to the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU on June 15, 1983, Iu. V. Andropov said:

At the Twenty-sixth Congress we emphatically declared the necessity of securing a close relationship between economic policy and social policy. And this is understandable: indeed the ultimate goal of our efforts in the economic sphere is to improve the living conditions of people. We must study and develop our plans, and take into thorough account, and reflect in these plans, the most important factors in the development of society—social, national, and demographic. This should be the unified policy of the party, the unified strategy of social development.⁵

It seems to us that the development of such a strategy requires an especially intensive development of studies at the “borders” between the various social sciences, and especially between economics and sociology. Today this is a need of society, a “social demand” imposed on science, of which scholars are becoming increasingly acutely aware.

There has been a growing interest in our country in recent years in a coordinated study of economic and social problems. Here are only a few of the most interesting examples. In 1982 E. Z. Maiminas published his article “On the Formation of Economic Mechanisms” in which an economic approach was combined with an analysis of the social characteristics of the social system, and in particular its “socioeconomic genotype.”⁶ According to the author, this genotype is a particular social mechanism based on a specific system of relations of production and management, and the bearers of that system are the social groups that make up the particular society. The contribution of these groups to the development of production depends on their interests, goals, value orientations, and cultural-historical traditions. Attempts have been made to work out the problem of socialist ownership of the means of production taking into account the concrete relations of possession, and disposition over and use of them by social groups. The synthesis of economic, social, and legal approaches is characteristic of the interesting studies by B. P. Kurashvili.⁷

There has also been a parallel movement among sociologists toward some timely problems of economics. Thus a team of Leningrad sociologists led by V. A. Iadov, which studied the process of transformation of work into a prime necessity of life in the 1960s, is now analyzing questions having to do with attitudes toward work and work discipline, and the poor quality of labor. Moscow sociologists have published the results of a study of the economic conditions of “social justice” with proposals of ways to improve distributive relations.⁸

Joint studies of the economic and social aspects of societal development are being actively pursued in other socialist countries as well, especially in Hungary. There some very interesting studies are being conducted on the influence of social structure and social relations on the economic development of society.⁹ An organic synthesis of an economic and a sociological analysis of processes of economic development has been achieved in the profound and original study by Academician Janos Kornai entitled Economics of Shortage.¹⁰ Hungarian sociologists are also actively studying the new economic structures that have emerged in the course of the economic reform, their pluses and minuses, and the possibilities of their further development. Major attention is being devoted in particular to the study of the social aspects of the development of the nonsocialized sector of production.¹¹ Hungarian economists and sociologists attach especially great importance to the concrete study of the categories of personal and group interests. They are endeavoring to overcome the dogmatic view that the simple fact of establishing social ownership of the means of production guarantees that economic interests of all social groups will coincide, and that group interests will be subordinate to social interests.

As we can see, the problems of economic sociology are quite timely. But the birth of this new discipline has not yet been fully acknowledged by Soviet science. The range of problems that must be dealt with has not yet been identified, the concepts and categories reflecting the essence of this new current have not been developed, much less given currency, and it has not yet developed its own special method. This is quite natural: the shaping of new scientific disciplines requires time.

It is not the authors’ purpose here to answer all these questions. Their aim is only to pose these questions, to provide an initial if extremely provisional solution to them, and thereby to attract the attention of the public to the importance of developing this new discipline. What should economic sociology study, or what is its subject matter?

The subject matter of economic sociology

The specific subject matter of this discipline is the laws of interaction of the economic and social spheres of the life of society, of economic and social processes.¹² Here we study the economic preconditions for the realization of the interests of social groups on the one hand, and the social factors and conditions of economic development on the other.

Both these groups of questions are to some extent studied in the borderline disciplines. Thus political economy studies the class structure of society, social differences between the city and countryside, between mental and physical labor, etc. Sociology in turn studies the economic foundations of many social processes—urbanization, migration of the population, the turnover of cadres, etc.

The distinctive characteristic of economic sociology is that its subject matter is not so much the sequences of interrelated economic and social phenomena as the mechanism effecting the link between economic and social development. The task of this scientific discipline is to ascertain the specific ways and means whereby the social structure of society influences the development of the economy, and whereby the economy influences social relations.

Two areas of science are most closely related to economic sociology: the study of the economic foundations of social differentiation of social groups, and the analysis of the social factors affecting economic development. The first area up to now has been studied more thoroughly than the second, and the results of these efforts have been presented in many solid monographs.¹³

The social factors underlying the effectiveness of the economy have also not escaped the attention of scholars, but works devoted to them usually deal with education and training of workers, their living conditions (housing, wages, social amenities, leisure time), and the migration and turnover of cadres. However, the central and most significant factor, the economic behavior of classes and groups occupying key positions in the system of production relations, has so far barely been studied.

But everything that takes place in the economy, from the compilation of production plans to the consumption of output, depends, if not to a critical degree, at least very substantially, on the behavior of the corresponding groups of workers, buyers, and consumers. For example, the behavior of people in the process of forming and developing the family: e.g., the marriage rate and divorce rate, the age at which men and women marry, and intrafamilial regulation of the birth rate, all influence the numerical size, age composition, and location of labor resources. The distribution of the workforce between the city and the countryside, among different regions, and among different branches of the economy is to a considerable extent determined by the directions in which people migrate, and by their shifts from certain branches of the economy to other branches. The occupational and skill composition of workers depends on the behavior of youth in the educational system, the quality of products depends on workers’ attitudes toward their work, etc. This means that to pinpoint the influence of social factors on the development of the economy the economic behavior of people must be studied.

But behavior is not an independent factor in the development of the economy. It, in turn, depends on a number of deeper-lying factors the most important of which are, first, the place, the socioeconomic position of social groups, and secondly the external conditions under which this behavior is played out in the economic sphere.

According to the Marxist tradition, the position of classes and groups in socialist society can be described by three basic characteristics: relationship to the means of production, role in the social organization of labor, and their methods for obtaining—and the size of—the consumed portion of the social wealth at their disposal.¹⁴ In empirical sociological studies each of these characteristics is made operational with the help of specific attributes reflecting the nature and content of labor, participation in management, control over the means of production, level of family incomes, etc. The substance of most of these attributes is closely related, so that there are firm grounds for speaking about the integral nature of the socioeconomic position of groups. The distinctive features of this position predetermine group interests, which, in turn guide the behavior of groups. In this context it is relevant to recall the following postulate of Marxism: “The economic relations of any given society are manifested first and foremost as interests.”¹⁵

If the direction and the specific modes of behavior of groups are determined by their interests, the margin of freedom they have in their behavior is set by conditions that are external to the groups. The principal regulator of the economic behav...