I have mixed opinions about this book. It offers pretty turgid discussions about Marxist economic theory and simultaneously attempts to describe a little history behind the economy of the former USSR / Soviet Union.
Chapter 1 discusses Marxist thinking on the capitalistic market economy and commodity production. I thought Roberts' explanations were more clear than most that I have read in other books on Marxist theory. I still find the subject pretty boring and say to myself, though, "You really mean that people actually fought and died over this?"
Chapter 2 on "War Communism" is much more interesting. Roberts argues that most historians have misread Lenin's, Trotsky's, and Bukharin's implementation of a forced or confiscatory distribution and production system as a temporary expedient caused by the civil war of 1918 - 1921. This is not correct. It was exactly the type of economic system that Marxist theory demanded and which Lenin was perfectly willing to establish permanently. Lenin and others supposedly experienced an existential and psychological crisis when they discovered that their intentions were impossible to achieve and that they had destroyed the economy. If a Marxist economic system could not be made to function, then what was the purpose of the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing civil war of 1918 - 1921? Soviet Marxist theoreticians have gone into ideological contortions over this issue. It was only later that central planning became a means for rapid industrialization and not a replacement for a capitalist market economy.
Chapter 4 "The Polycentric Soviet Economy" then describes the Soviet economy as it was developed and eventually existed. There is much discussion of the irrationality and inefficiency of the former Soviet economy. Here there is another misunderstanding by western economists. Ideologically, in the Soviet Union the purpose of central planning was to eliminate the market economy. The fact that it did so very inefficiently was irrelevant.
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