ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the various theories which depict the Soviet system as capitalist Critical consideration that is given first to the numerous theories of ‘state capitalism,’ and then to the other ‘capitalist’ theories. The view that Soviet society was capitalist has been held by a large number of writers from various political tendencies, including—in alphabetical order—anarchism, council communism, ‘impossibilism,’ many types of Leninism, libertarian socialism, Marxist-Humanism, Menshevism, the Situationist International, and social democracy. In some ways Wildt’s theory can likewise be placed within a political area quite close to that of council communism. The first “capitalist” theorist to eschew any concept of “state capitalism” but at the same time to theorise economic forms which were specifically Soviet was the libertarian theorist Cornelius Castoriadis, who to an even greater extent than Otto Ruhle sees the USSR as the most administratively “advanced” capitalist country.
