ABSTRACT
The quantum of views and opinions stand on a knowledge base that is narrow and the ‘known’ far exceeds the ‘unknown’ in a literature highly charged by ideological standpoints defined largely by ‘ways of seeing’. The political economy focus has often been on questions around the organisation of production and productive forces— evaluations largely based on a ‘productivist’ paradigm. A radical transition from the capitalist system to socialism is different from all previous social changes known in history because it marks the beginning of an entirely different social organisation—change from a class society to classless society. Efforts have hardly been made to understand in detail the contested system of ‘actually existing socialism’, and understand the conflicts of change. A non-determinist and non-productivist conceptualising of socialism has to be adopted as the entry point of reference. Multiple strands of later Marxist interpretations have tried to locate the conflicts and contests of changing class relations in the attempts at social transformation.
