ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the most important “Marxist” theories of the nature of the Soviet system from a single standpoint, namely focusing on how they approach the matter of the working class. It focuses on how the overall view of the system relates to a theoretical understanding of working class struggle. The chapter also focuses on how the understanding of Soviet political economy by the proponents of the “workers” state’ theory touches upon class conflict solely in terms of a static “conflict of interests” in the abstractly differentiated sphere of distribution. Viewing the role of the “political” in just as extreme a fashion, Ferenc Feher, Agnes Heller, and Gyorgy Markus later take the view that what problematic self-assertion there actually is on the part of the workers—seen largely as a matter of consumption choices—is oppositional to bureaucratic interests mainly because it pushes towards marketisation.
