SOCI 50136: Comparative Socialism Studies

Course Overview 

This seminar interrogates “socialism” as both an important analytical category and a diverse set of objects of social inquiry. We examine the historical experiences of “actually existing socialism” in the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa through multiple comparative lenses. We consider the common challenges besetting socialist projects around the world, varieties of socialism and their shapers, transnational linkages and system-wide dynamics, and pathways of transitions from socialism to capitalism. Theoretical treatises, historical texts and empirical research from such disciplines as sociology, history, political science, anthropology, heterodox economics and literary/cultural studies will be surveyed for these purposes. Throughout the quarter, we explore how a comparative inquiry of socialism helps us rethink some of the most foundational concepts in the social sciences, such as capital, democracy, development, labor, the market, the state and society.

Course Format

This course is a reading-intensive seminar. Readings for each week total around 200 pages. You are expected to read the texts intensively and partake in the seminar discussion.

Readings of each week revolve around a key theme. In most weeks, we read primary texts produced by key historical actors themselves embedded in the building of socialist projects, in conversation with scholarly research conducted on these socialist projects. The objective is to build intellectual and political connections across multiple temporal and geographic scales. Even though the readings are curated to cover a broad array of historical cases of “actually existing socialism”, it by no means seeks to be comprehensive. Instead, it primarily focuses on generating a set of conceptual and analytical tools for us to rethink what it means to understand “socialism” comparatively and transnationally, as well as to reflect upon what the payoffs are of such an intellectual endeavor.

Required Texts

You are required to procure a physical or electronic copy of the following texts. The rest of the course readings will be available on the Canvas course website.

-  Aminzade, Ronald. Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Africa: The Case of Tanzania (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

-  Bukharin, Nikolai. Selected Writings on the State and the Transition to Socialism (M.E. Sharpe, 1982).

-  Comisso, Ellen. Workers’ Control Under Plan and Market: Implications of Yugoslav Self-Management (Yale University Press, 1979).

-  Galway, Matthew. The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist Movement, 1949–1979 (Cornell University Press, 2022). 

-  Haney, Lynne. Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary (University of California Press, 2002).

-  Sanchez-Sibony, Oscar. The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market: Energy and the Ascent of Finance in Cold War Europe, 1964-1971 (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

-  Wang, Zheng. Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1964 (University of California Press, 2016).

-  Wemheuer, Felix. Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union (Yale University Press, 2014).

Week 1: Why Comparative Socialism Studies?

-  Burawoy, Michael and Janos Lukacs. 1985. “Mythologies of Work: A Comparison of Firms in State Socialism and Advanced Capitalism.” American Sociological Review 50(6): 723-737.

-  Deakin, Robert and Gabriela Nicolescu. 2022. “Socialist Fragments East and West: Towards a Comparative Anthropology of Global (Post-) Socialism.” Critique of Anthropology 42(2): 114-136.

Week 2: Capital Accumulation

-  Preobrazhensky, Evgeny. 1926. “Part II: The Law of Primitive Socialist Accumulation” (pp.77-146) and “Once More about Socialist Accumulation: Reply to Comrade Bukharin” (pp.224-267) in The New Economics.

-  Saith, Ashwani. 1985. “Primitive Accumulation, Agrarian Reform and Socialist Transitions: An Argument.” The Journal of Development Studies, 22(1), 1–48.

-  Wemheuer, Felix. 2014. “Part I: Comparing the Great Leap Famines under Stalin and Mao” (pp.23-74) in Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union.

Week 3: Planning and the Market

-  Bukharin, Nikolai. Selected Writings on the State and the Transition to Socialism.

 “The New Course in Economic Policy (1921)” (pp.99-108)

 “Toward a Critique of the Economic Platform of the Opposition (The Lessons of October 1923) (1925)” (pp.109-150)

 “A New Revelation Concerning the Soviet Economy or How to Destroy the Worker-Peasant Bloc (On the Question of the Economic Basis of Trotskyism) (1925)” (pp.151-182)

 “Concerning the New Economic Policy and Our Tasks (1925)” (pp.183-208)

-  Harrison, Mark. 1985. “Economic Planning and the Search for Balance” (pp.1-41) in Soviet Planning in Peace and War, 1938-1945.

-  Kaimowitz, David. 1988. “Nicaragua’s Experience with Agricultural Planning: From State‐centred Accumulation to the Strategic Alliance with the Peasantry.” The Journal of Development Studies 24(4), 115–135.

-  Laibman, David. 1992. “Market and Plan: The Evolution of Socialist Social Structures in History and Theory.” Science and Society 56(1): 60-91.

Week 4: Class

-  Dilas, Milovan. 1957. Pp. 1-102 in The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.

-  Zhang, Chunqiao. 1975. “On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie.”

-  Zukin, Sharon. 1978. “The Problem of Social Class under Socialism.” Theory and Society 6(3): 391-427.

-  Wu, Yiching. 2014. “Enemies from the Past: Bureaucracy, Class, and Mao’s Continuous Revolution” (pp.17-52) in The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis.

Week 5: Democracy

-  Luxemburg, Rosa. 1918. “The Russian Revolution” (pp.281-310) in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader.

-  Kollantai, Alexandra. 1921. “The Trade Unions: Their Roles and Problems” and “On Bureaucracy and Self-activity of the Masses” in The Workers’ Opposition.

-  Comisso, Ellen. 1979. “Part III: The Case of the Self-Managed Enterprise” (pp.142-208) in Workers’ Control Under Plan and Market: Implications of Yugoslav Self-Management.

-  Hetland, Gabe. 2014. “The Crooked Line: From Populist Mobilization to Participatory Democracy in Chávez-Era Venezuela.” Qualitative Sociology 37(4): 373-401.

-  Andreas, Joel. 2019. “Chapter 4: Mass Supervision” (pp.82-98) and “Chapter 5: Big Democracy” (pp.99-127) in Disenfranchised: The Rise and Fall of Industrial Citizenship in China.

Week 6: Social Reproduction

-  Kollantai, Alexandra.

 “The First Steps Towards the Protection of Motherhood (1918)”

 “Communism and the Family (1920)”

 “The Labor of Women in the Evolution of the Economy (1921)”

-  Haney, Lynne. 2002. “Part II: The Maternalist Welfare State” (pp.91-164) in Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary.

-  Fábregas, Johanna I. Moya. 2010. “The Cuban Woman’s Revolutionary Experience: Patriarchal Culture and the State’s Gender Ideology, 1950–1976.” Journal of Women’s History 22(1): 61-84.

-  Wang, Zheng. 2016. “Chapter 1: Feminist Contentions in Socialist State Formation” (pp.29-53) and “Chapter 2: The Political Perils in 1957” (pp.54-77) in Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1964.

-  Dong, Yige. 2024. “‘Red Housekeeping’ in a Socialist Factory: Jiashu and Transforming Reproductive Labor in Urban China (1949-1962).” International Review of Social History OnlineFirst 1-24.

Week 7: National and Racial Questions

-  Luxemburg, Rosa. 1908-1909. “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination” and “The Nation-State and the Proletariat.”

-  Lenin, Vladimir. 1916. “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination: Theses.”

-  Nkrumah, Kwame. 1963. Pp.50-65 and pp.118-149 in Africa Must Unite.

-  Hashi, Iraj. 1992. “The Disintegration of Yugoslavia: Regional Disparities and the Nationalities Question.” Capital and Class 16(3): 41-88.

-  Aminzade, Ronald. 2013. “Chapter 7: Nationalism, State Socialism and the Politics of Race” (pp.208-244) in Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Africa: The Case of Tanzania.

Week 8: Transnational Socialism

-  Cigar, Norman. 1983. “Arab Socialism Revisited: The Yugoslav Roots of Its Ideology.” Middle Eastern Studies 19(2): 152-187.

-  Ghodsee, Kristen. 2015. “Socialist Internationalism and State Feminism during the Cold War: The Case of Bulgaria and Zambia.” Clio: Women, Gender, History 41: 106-125.

-  Bockman, Johanna. 2019. “Democratic Socialism in Chile and Peru: Revisiting the ‘Chicago Boys’ as the Origin of Neoliberalism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 61(3):654–679.

-  Vargha, Dora. 2020. “Technical Assistance and Socialist International Health: Hungary, the WHO and the Korean War.” History and Technology 36(3-4): 400-417.

-  Galway, Matthew. 2022. “Chapter 2: Transmitting Maoism” (pp.55-84), “Chapter 5: Like Desiccated Straw in the Rice Fields” (pp.137-158) and “Chapter 6: ‘We Must Combine Theory and Practice’” (pp.159-199) in The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist Movement, 1949–1979. 

Week 9: Socialisms in a Capitalist World-System

-  Trotsky, Leon. 1906. Results and Prospects.

-  Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 16(4): 387-415.

-  Sanchez-Sibony, Oscar. 2023. “Introduction” (pp.1-38) in The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market: Energy and the Ascent of Finance in Cold War Europe, 1964-1971.

-  Wu, Bohao. 2024. “Refuelling the Cold War: The China Factor in the United States and Japan’s Pursuit of Economic Detente with the USSR, 1972-1980.” Modern Asian Studies OnlineFirst 1-25.