Charles Bettelheim

Charles Bettelheim (born 20 November 1913 in Paris, † July 20, 2006 ) was a French Marxist economist and sociologist.

Life and work

Bettelheim worked at the Sorbonne in Paris, with the main focus planning, development and the Third World, and was the founder and director of the Centre d' études des modes d' industrialization ( CEMI ). He also came out with historical research on the history of the Soviet Union. Bettelheim was next to the American Paul M. Sweezy, the Egyptian Samir Amin, the Belgians Ernest Mandel and others on the major representatives of the "Radical School of Economics ". His work was in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the Third World (Latin America, India) and in the context of the New Left in Western Europe and North America, strong consideration, however, came in the 1980s into oblivion.

Bettelheim employed in 1936 during a study visit to Moscow with the Soviet planned economy and then was in France as the leading expert. In the 1950s, he welcomed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe introduced after the death of Stalin's economic and social reforms ( de-Stalinization ).

With the establishment of the Centre d' études des modes d' industrialization ( CEMI ), he created a center for discussion and analysis of problems of industrialization of developing countries. 1963 Fidel Castro committed Bettelheim as a business consultant for Cuba. Due to its controversial discussion with Che Guevara and Ernest Mandel on issues of economic planning Bettelheim became known internationally. During Guevara strove to abolish as soon as possible by maximum centralization of commodity production and the market economy and drew the moral mobilization of the "new man" in the center, Bettelheim argued for a long-term pragmatic strategy of transition to socialism on the basis of Lenin's conception of the New Economic policy with mixed forms of ownership, a combination of planning and market elements, decentralized decision-making and the development of agriculture as a starting point.

Criticism of the SU

At the same time Bettelheim's attitude towards the Soviet Union became more and more critical as he saw the successful model of an alternative path of development for the Third World in the People's Republic of China. The Chinese criticism of the Soviet " economism " and Mao Zedong's emphasis on the " primacy of politics " led Bettelheim to revise its represented in the Cuba debate positions partially. At the theoretical level criticized Bettelheim, based on concepts of the philosopher Louis Althusser, the equation of " capitalism " with private property and market, and "socialism" with state ownership and central planning. He pointed out that the formal legal level of the property still give no information on the real relations of production and state ownership still mean no real socialization. In Economic calculation and forms of property (1970 ), he discussed the problem of overcoming the goods and value-form and the development of an "economic measure " in the transition to socialism by transforming the relations of production.

Bettelheim's historical analysis of the maldevelopment of the Soviet Union ( The Class Struggles in the USSR) had the core of the critical finding that there from the late 1920s, a policy of forced, extremely fast, vertical - centralized industrialization on the basis of forced collectivization of agriculture an only in appearance socialist "state capitalism" have spawned, the continued structural subordination of social needs under a blind compulsion for accumulation, prevented an emancipatory transformation of social relations and social differentiation with the same elites have spawned as capitalism.

China and the Third World

In his travels to China Bettelheim arrived in contrast to the impression that there a form of grassroots and needs-driven development assume shape. His travel books (among China 1972) he described the measures introduced by the Cultural Revolution, new management methods in Chinese factories with horizontal and participatory structures, collective leadership and participation of workers in all decisions.

Bettelheim belonged to the leading advocates the thesis that social and economic progress in the Third World countries requires a political break with imperialism and a detachment from the dependence relations of unequal international division of labor of the world market. This position involved a also a sharp critique of the international role of the Soviet Union, in whose development policy commitment Bettelheim saw only a variant of capitalist, accumulation centered models. On the basis of political independence saw this thesis given the chance to practice alternative development models that enable an oriented not to accumulation and profit, but to the needs of populations economics with a balance between agriculture and industry.

1977 put Bettelheim chaired the Society for French- Chinese friendship down. With the resignation protesting against the completed after the death of Mao Zedong change of course, which he interpreted as counter-revolution. China broke up in the following years of the practice under Mao autarky model and performed gradually integrating into the global market, which was accompanied by a surprising growth. The global rise of neoliberalism and the decline of incurred in the period of decolonization, liberation movements left the formerly influential paradigm of "auto -centered development ", one of whose main theorists Bettelheim, fade.

Bettelheim's student and long -time collaborator Bernard Chavance one of the leading representatives of the regulation theory.

Works

  • Economic calculation and forms of property. On the theory of transitional society, Berlin: Wagenbach 1970
  • 1972 China economy, business and education since the Cultural Revolution (ed., together with Maria Antonietta Macciochi ), Berlin. Wagenbach 1975
  • The Class Struggles in the USSR, 2 volumes, Berlin: Oberbaumbrucke Verlag 1975
  • On the nature of Soviet society, in: Bettelheim, Meszaros, Rossanda include: power and opposition in the post-revolutionary societies, Frankfurt aM: Suhrkamp 1979, p 101-106
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