A Ukrainian Marxist Analysis of Russia

I’ve been taken with this article on Jacobin. All with a taste for radical political economy should read it. It owes something to Branko Milanovic’s book, Capitalism, Alone, which I reviewed for Jacobin, not to Branko’s satisfaction.

What I like most in the piece is how the author drills down into terms commonly bandied about on the Left, such as imperialism or ruling class, to uncover how much they leave to the imagination, particularly in the case of Russia.

The key point about Russia is its status in the category of “political capitalism” described by Milanovic. A simple translation is a system laced with corruption, where political characters are able to use their positions to amass vast wealth. Corruption is ubiquitous in the world, but its special relevance in Russia and similar cases is its status as the foundation of state power. Such a system can be efficient, as in the Peoples Republic of China, or not, as in Russia.

It is this system that explains Putin’s need to expand into neighboring countries where the corrupt class can infiltrate and enarge its wealth holdings. It is distinct from other types of imperialism, founded for instance on resource extraction or the exploitation of labor (both pertinent to the U.S. and the British Empire, among others).

By the author, it is not a case of nostalgia for the ancient Russian empire. That’s just for the people in the cheap seats. It decidedly is a case of competiton with NATO and the ‘West’ for territorial influence. That doesn’t absolve Putin for the moral atrocity of military invasion, but it does explain it.

The U.S.-anchored capitalist development model differs from ‘political capitalism’ qualitatively. It should be no mystery why the people of Ukraine prefer it to the Russian, even though it could turn out to be light on social-democratic policy.

There’s a lot more to the article.