Suchergebnisse

Draws on 1987-1998 ethnographic research in the Bulgarian village of Zamfirovo to expand on previous work on the threat of transition for agrarian arrangements & identities by encompassing motivations basic to socialist "survivals" & "revivals." Varied perceptions of perestroika held by the villagers are related, revealing that attitudes toward socialism tended to shift depending on its political & economic utility. Those formerly critical of the Communist Party used socialist ideological arguments against the new reforms if they perceived them to be nonbeneficial. How villagers tried to preserve institutions of symbolic & material importance, especially the cooperative, is described, as are efforts of the Union of Democratic Forces to liquidate cooperatives under the mistaken belief they would be supported by the population. Instead, feeling that their work & identity were threatened, the villagers sabotaged government land redistribution by voting socialist, indicating that rural socialist sentiment was as much a product of the transition as a legacy of the socialist past. 20 References. J. Lindroth

Examines the relationship between capitalism & the market in Karl Marx's Capital. According to Marx, capital represents the structure that determines the metastructure of the market. While conceptually distinct from one another, Marx argues that they are empirically inseparable, such that capitalism cannot be abolished without also abolishing the market. More specifically, abolition of capitalism entails a movement away from markets toward a system of economic planning that removes the qualities of private interest & power from economic relations. It is suggested that Marx's fallacy is in understanding the relation of market to planning in terms of a historicist paradigm of germination. Marx imagines that planning will first germinate in factories, & spread from there to corporations &, ultimately, to capitalism. Rather than alternatives existing in a historical sequence, it is argued that market & planning actually coexist as contemporary forms. It is concluded that the socialist project in the 20th century has failed because it has not recognized the mutuality of markets & planning, a failure that stems directly from Marx's political economic theory. D. Ryfe