Charles Bettelheim
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Charles Bettelheim (20 November 1913 – 20 July 2006) was a French
Biography
Henri Bettelheim, the father of Charles Bettelheim, was a
After
His decision to choose
In the Fifties, Bettelheim began his international activities as an advisor to the governments of Third World countries; he was the spokesperson for Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, for Jawaharlal Nehru in India, and for Ahmed Ben Bella in Algeria. In 1958, he created an institutional base for his research by founding the CEMI. In 1963, Che Guevara invited him to Cuba, where he participated in a "grand debate" on socialist economics.
In 1966, Bettelheim was particularly interested in China. He helped the Union of Young Communists (Marxist–Leninist) with theoretical planning, without being directly affiliated with the organization. In his capacity as President of the Franco-Chinese Friendship Association (Association des amitiés Franco-Chinoises), he visited the
From 1980 onward, Bettelheim fell more and more by the wayside—a result of the profound political changes in the Third World—and, in Europe, of the decline (and eventual dissolution) of "hard-line socialism", which rendered "obsolete" any debate over the paradigms of development in the Southern countries, in an atmosphere of planned economy independent of the world market—an economy to which Bettelheim had contributed so much. Bettelheim has written a book of memoirs which has remained unfinished.
Until his death, Bettelheim lived in Paris. He did not publish anything in his later years. His student and long-time colleague Bernard Chavance is among the leading exponents of Regulation theory.[citation needed]
Thought
Despite his negative experiences in Moscow, Bettelheim retained a favorable attitude towards Soviet socialism until the Sixties, citing the economic accomplishments of the Soviet Union, which he appreciated from an independent point of view. In 1956, he endorsed the
From the Cuban debate to the critique of "economism"
In the Cuban debate of 1963, Bettelheim was opposed to the voluntarist ideas of Che Guevara, who wanted to abolish free market and the production of merchandise through a very rapid and centralized industrialization, morally mobilizing "the new man." Bettelheim took a position against this plan, to which Fidel Castro had also subscribed: both Che Guevara and Castro preferred the monoculture of sugar as the basis of Cuban economy, rather than a strict analogy to the economy of the Soviet Union. In Cuba, Bettelheim recommended a diversified economy, based on agriculture, prudent industrialization, broad central planning, mixed forms of property ownership with market elements—a pragmatic strategy similar to the "New Economic Policy" begun in Russia by Vladimir Lenin in 1922. Opposing Guevara, Bettelheim argued (in line with the last writings of Stalin) that the "law of value" was the manifestation of objective social conditions which could not be overcome by willful decisions, but only by a process of long-term social transformation.
This debate demonstrated the profound differences which, from then on, separated Bettelheim from Marxist "orthodoxy", which considered Socialism as the result of "the development of maximum centralization of all forces of industrial production". For Bettelheim, socialism is rather an alternative voice in development; a process of transformation of social understandings. Inspired by the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the thought of Mao Zedong, and in cooperation with the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, Bettelheim was opposed to "economism" and to the "primacy of the means of production" of traditional Marxism: against the idea that socialist transformation of social bonds was a necessary effect of the development of the forces of production (liberating those bonds from them, according to Marxist orthodoxy, since private property dominates them in "bourgeois" society), he affirmed the necessity for actively and politically transforming social connections. In his book Economic Calculations and Forms of Ownership (Calcul économique et formes de proprieté), Bettelheim re-thinks the problems of transition to socialism, while criticizing the supposition that nationalization and state ownership of the means of production was already "socialist"—it is not the legal form of property, but true socialization of the web of production, which characterizes such a transition; the crucial problem in socialist planning is the replacement of the form of "value" with the development of a method of measurement which takes into account the social utility of production.
Chinese experience and analysis of the Soviet Union
In China, Bettelheim had the impression that he was in the process of witnessing just such a process of transformation. More specifically, he noted that the Cultural Revolution—a revolution of the political, ideological and cultural superstructure—changed the industrial organization accompanying it by a general participation by the workers in all decisions, and overcoming the division of "manual" and "intellectual" labor. During these years, China was the benchmark for the
Under the banner of a "Maoist" approach, Bettelheim began his voluminous work on the history of the Soviet Union: Les luttes de classes en URSS (1974–1982) (Class Struggle in the USSR (1974–1982)), where he examines the reasons for the distortions of soviet socialism, which, according to Bettelheim, is nothing more than a "State Capitalism." Bettelheim showed that after the
Finally, Bettelheim called into doubt the socialist character of the October Revolution, interpreting it as a seizing of power by a radical branch of the Russian intelligentsia, which "confiscated" a popular revolution.[2]
Bettelheim was a leading proponent of the thesis that "development" in the countries of the "Third World" necessitates a political break with imperialism and a distantanglement from the bonds of dependency on the unequal international division of labor of the world market. This position also includes a sharp criticism of the international role of the Soviet Union whose politics of development Bettelheim saw as just another variant of
Bettelheim's later works
When, in 1978, the
Publications
- La planification soviétique. Rivière, 1945 (Soviet planning)
- L'économie allemande sous le nazisme, un aspect de la décadence du capitalisme. Rivière, 1946 (Bibliothèque générale d'économie politique) (The German economy under Nazism, an Aspect of the Decadence of Capitalism)
- Bilan de l'économie française (1919–1946). PUF, 1947 (Balance-sheet for the French Economy)
- Esquisse d'un tableau économique de l'Europe. Domat, 1948 (Draft of an economic picture of Europe)
- L'économie soviétique. Sirey, 1950 (The Soviet Economy)
- Une ville française moyenne. Auxerre en 1950. Étude de structure sociale et urbaine (avec Suzanne Frère). Colin, 1950 (Cahiers de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques) (An Average French City. Auxerre in 1950. Study of the Social and Urban Structure.
- Modèles de croissance et développement économique. Tiers-Monde, tome I, nos. 1-2, 1960 (Models of Economic Growth and Development)
- L'Inde indépendante. Colin, 1962 (Independent India)
- Planification et croissance accélérée. Maspero, 1965 (Collection Économie et socialisme) (Planning and Accelerated Growth)
- La transition vers l'économie socialiste. Maspero, 1968 (Transition to a Socialist Economy)
- Problèmes théoriques et pratiques de la planification. Maspero, 1970 (Theoretical and Practical Problems with Planning)
- Calcul économique et formes de propriété. Maspero, 1971 (Economic Calculus and Forms of Ownership)
- Révolution culturelle et organisation industrielle en Chine. Maspero, 1973 (Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China)
- Les luttes de classes en URSS – Première période, 1917-1923. Seuil/Maspero, 1974 (Class Conflict in the USSR—First period, 1917-1923)
- Les luttes de classes en URSS – Deuxième période, 1923-1930. Seuil/Maspero, 1977 (Class Conflict in the USSR—Second period, 1923-1930)
- Questions sur la Chine, après la mort de Mao Tsé-toung. Maspero, 1978 (Collection Économie et socialisme) (Questions about China after the Death of Mao Tse-tung)
- Les luttes de classes en URSS – Troisième période, 1930-1941. Tome I: Les dominés, tome II: Les dominants. Seuil/Maspero, 1982 ("Class Conflict in the USSR -- Third Period, 1930-1941. Vol. I: "The Dominated," Vol II: "The Dominators.")
- La pensée marxienne à l'épreuve de l'histoire, interview in Les Temps modernes, nº 472, 1985 (Marxist Thinking About the Experience of History)
- La pertinence des concepts marxiens de classe et lutte de classes pour analyser la société soviétique, dans Marx en perspective, Éditions de l'EHESS, 1985 (The Relevance of Marxist Concepts of Class Conflict to the Analysis of Soviet Society)
See also
Notes
- ^ The "Sixth Section" of the École Pratique des Hautes Études was the "School of Economic and Social Sciences" (Sciences Économiques et Sociales.) In 1975, it became autonomous as the School of Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.)
The above article is a translation of the French Wikipedia article on Charles Bettelheim.
References
- ^ OCLC 1325647379.
- ^ a b "Contributions Of Charles Bettelheim| Countercurrents". countercurrents.org. 2023-04-14. Retrieved 2023-07-29.