Neither Capitalism Nor Socialism : Theory of Bureaucratic Collectivism - Origins and Developments

This collection of articles illuminates the emergence of the theory of "bureaucratic collectivism" in the late 1930s and 1940s.

These articles are written from a Marxist perspective by contributors ranging from Max Shachtman, James Burnham, Irving Howe, Hal Draper to Dwight McDonald.

The articles set forth the theory of communist societies as a new form of class society, and examine its implication for an understanding of modern corporate, managerial capitalism.

In their introductory essay, co-editors Haberkern and Lipow examine the context in which these articles were written, and evaluate the significance of the theory of bureaucratic collectivism, in the post-Cold War world, for an understanding of developments in the former Soviet Union and China within modern corporate capitalism.

In presenting the arguments for seeing the Soviet Union as a society that was neither socialist nor capitalist, the essays expand the understanding of the meaning of democratic socialism, and provide a theoretical basis for the reconstruction of socialism as the democratic alternative to global capitalism and the new forms of bureaucratic or managerial corporatism in the former communist societies. Ernest Haberkern is the editor of Hal Draper's "Socialism from Below" and Draper's "Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution".

Arthur Lipow is the author of "Authoritarian Socialism in America" and "Transforming American Politics".