Isaac Ilyich Rubin

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Polina and Isaak Rubin (1910)

Isaak Ilyich Rubin ( Russian Исаак Ильич Рубин ; born June 12, 1886 in Dünaburg , today Latvia ; † November 27, 1937 in Aktjubinsk , today Kazakhstan ) was a Russian or Soviet economist and is considered the most important theoretician of his time in the field of Marxian value theory . His main work, Studies on Marxian Value Theory , was published in 1924. He was executed in 1937 in the course of the Stalinist purges .

Life

Rubin attended a cheder as a child and continued his school career in Vitebsk . He had been a member of the General Jewish Workers' Union since 1904 , and in 1905 he joined the Russian revolutionary movement . After the failed revolution, he enrolled at the University of St. Petersburg in 1905 and graduated in law in 1910. In the following years he practiced as a lawyer, from 1912 in Moscow .

After the February Revolution of 1917 , Rubin increasingly published articles and pamphlets on labor and social security law as well as on general economic topics. He made friends with the head of the Marx-Engels-Institute Dawid Ryazanov and was able to quickly develop a reputation as a leading Marx researcher. Because of his reputation, he was appointed professor of political economy at Moscow University in 1921 .

Rubin belonged to the Menshevik faction within the General Jewish Workers' Union, which in 1920 opposed joining the Communist Party , which was now completely dominated by the Bolsheviks . The Bundists , who were inclined to the Mensheviks , resigned and founded the short-lived Social Democratic League , in which Rubin acted as secretary. From 1921 he was also subjected to repression and was arrested again and again. Because of his reputation, Rubin enjoyed preferential treatment and was allowed to continue writing on his work. In addition, submissions from numerous influential Bolsheviks such as Nikolai Krestinsky , Anatoli Lunacharsky , Mikhail Pokrowski , Georgi Plekhanov and Dawid Ryazanov repeatedly led to his release.

After the publication of his main work, the Studies on Marxian Value Theory in 1928, criticism of his positions intensified. He was accused of falsifying Marx's economic theory, an idealistic and metaphysical approach to economic categories, and the separation of form and content . He was the target of a campaign that culminated in an indictment, published in Pravda in November 1930 , alleging Rubin of being a member of a Menshevik kulak conspiracy.

In December 1930 Rubin was arrested and tortured and forced to confess that he was one of the Mensheviks , which had been banned since the Kronstadt sailors' uprising . The five-year prison sentence was replaced in 1933 by exile in the Kazakh village of Turgai . Later he was allowed to move to Aktyubinsk to work in a cooperative . There, however, Rubin was arrested again in November 1937 for founding a counter-revolutionary organization, sentenced to death and executed on the same day.

Between 1989 and 1991 Rubin was acquitted of all allegations post mortem in the course of perestroika and rehabilitated.

Isaak Rubin's younger brother Aron (1888–1961) was a philosopher, literary critic and translator.

Publications (selection)

Main work

  • Isaak Iljitsch Rubin: Studies on Marx's theory of value . With an introduction and translated by Annette Neusüss-Fögen based on the unpublished American translation of the third Russian edition, Moscow / Leningrad 1928. Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-434-30141-0 .

Further publications

  • Two writings on Marx's theory of value: Franz Petry : The social content of Marx's theory of value. Jena 1916. 70 pages; Heinrich Dietzel : On the doctrinal value of the theory of values ​​and the fundamental error of Marx's theory of distribution. Leipzig 1921. 39 pp . In: Marx-Engels Archive . Journal of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, ed. by D. Rjazanov , volume 1. Marx-Engels-Archiv Verlagsgesellschaft, Frankfurt a./M. 1925, pp. 360-369. ( Online )
  • I [saak] I [ljitsch] Rubin, SA Bessonow and others: Dialectic of categories. Debate in the USSR (1927-29). VSA, Berlin 1975, DNB 750363835 .
  • The Marxian theory of commodity fetishism . In: Devi Dumbadze, Ingo Elbe u. a. (Ed.): Critique of Political Philosophy. Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-89691-789-8 . (German first translation of the first chapter of 'Studies on Marxian Value Theory') online pdf
  • Studies of Monetary Theory . In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research. New episode special volume 4. Argument Verlag, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-88619-699-9 , pp. 9–118.
  • Rubin, Isaac Ilyich: A History of Economic Thought, translated by Don Filtzer from the 2nd Russian edition from 1929, Pluto Press, London 1979

literature

Web links

biography

Primary texts

Bibliography

personal data
SURNAME Rubin, Isaak Ilyich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Рубин, Исаак Ильич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian economist
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Dünaburg
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1937
Place of death Aktyubinsk