Charles Bettelheim

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

life and work

Bettelheim worked at the Paris Sorbonne with a focus on planning, development and the Third World and was the founder and director of the Center d'études des modes d'industrialization (CEMI). In addition, he made historical research on the history of the Soviet Union . Bettelheim belonged to the American Paul M. Sweezy , the Egyptian Samir Amin , the Belgian Ernest Mandel and others to the important representatives of the "Radical School of Economics". His work received strong attention 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, but was increasingly forgotten in the 1980s .

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

With the establishment of the Center d'études des modes d'industrialisation (CEMI) he created a center for the discussion and analysis of problems of industrialization in developing countries. In 1963 Fidel Castro hired Bettelheim as an economic advisor for Cuba . Bettelheim became internationally known through his controversial discussion with Che Guevara and Ernest Mandel on questions of economic planning. While Guevara strove to abolish commodity production and the market economy as quickly as possible through maximum centralization and to focus on the moral mobilization of the "new man", Bettelheim pleaded for a long-term pragmatic strategy of the transition to socialism based on Lenin's conception of the New Economic Politics 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 Soviet Union

At the same time, Bettelheim's attitude towards the Soviet Union became increasingly critical, while he saw the People's Republic of China as the successful model of an alternative development path for the Third World. The Chinese criticism of Soviet " economism " and Mao Zedong's emphasis on the "primacy of politics " prompted Bettelheim to partially revise his positions in the Cuban debate. On the theoretical level, Bettelheim, based on the concepts of the philosopher Louis Althusser , criticized the equation of “ capitalism ” with private property and the market and “ socialism ” with state property and central planning. He pointed out that the formal-legal level of property does not yet provide any information about the real production conditions and that state property does not yet mean real socialization . In Economic Calculation and Forms of Property (1970) he discussed the problem of overcoming the form of goods and values and the development of an “economic measurement” in the transition to socialism through the transformation of the relations of production.

Bettelheim's historical analysis of the undesirable development of the Soviet Union ( the class struggles in the USSR ) had the critical finding that from the end of the 1920s a policy of forced, extremely fast, vertical-centralized industrialization based on the compulsory collectivization of agriculture was only one thing what appeared to have produced socialist “ state capitalism ”, which structurally continued the subordination of social needs to a blind compulsion to accumulate, prevented an emancipatory transformation of social relationships and produced a social differentiation with the same functional elites as capitalism .

China and the Third World

On his travels to the People's Republic of China , on the other hand, Bettelheim got the impression that a form of grassroots democratic and needs-based development was taking shape there. In his travel reports (including China 1972 ) he described the new forms of management introduced by the Cultural Revolution in Chinese factories with horizontal and participatory structures, collective management and the participation of workers in all decisions.

At the time, Bettelheim was one of the leading advocates of the thesis that social and economic progress in the countries of the Third World required a political break with imperialism and a detachment from the dependencies of the unequal international division of labor in the world market . This position also included a sharp criticism of the international role of the Soviet Union, whose development policy engagement Bettelheim saw as only one variant of capitalist, accumulation-centered models. On the basis of political independence, this thesis saw the opportunity to practice alternative development models that enable an economy with a balanced relationship between agriculture and industry that is not oriented towards accumulation and profit , but rather towards the needs of the population .

In 1977 Bettelheim resigned the chairmanship of the Society for Franco-Chinese Friendship. With his resignation, he protested against the change of course that had taken place after the death of Mao Zedong, which he interpreted as a counterrevolution . In the years that followed, China broke away from the self-sufficiency model practiced under Mao and gradually integrated into the world market, which was accompanied by surprising growth dynamics. The global rise of neoliberalism and the decline of the liberation movements that arose during the period of decolonization faded the previously influential paradigm of “auto-centered development”, of which Bettelheim was one of the most important theorists.

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

Works

• Building socialism in China . Trikont, Munich 1969
• Law of Value, Planning and Awareness. The planning debate in Cuba . (Together with Fidel Castro , Ernesto "Che" Guevara , Ernest Mandel , Mora) New Critique, Frankfurt 1969
• Economic calculation and forms of ownership. On the theory of the transition society . Wagenbach, Berlin 1970
• About the persistence of commodity relationships in the socialist countries . Merve, Berlin 1970
• Theory and Practice of Socialist Planning . Trikont, Munich 1971
• Mass line and revolutionary party . Trikont, Munich 1973
• The German economy under National Socialism . Trikont, Munich 1974
• China after the Cultural Revolution . Trikont, Munich 1974
• China 1972. Economy, business and education since the Cultural Revolution (ed., Together with Maria Antonietta Macciochi). Wagenbach, Berlin 1975
• On the nature of Soviet society , in: Bettelheim, Meszaros, Rossanda u. a .: Power and opposition in post-revolutionary societies . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1979, pp. 101-106
• The class struggles in the USSR

1. 1917–1923 , Oberbaumverlag, Berlin 1975
2. 1923–1930, published only in French
3. Translated by Andreas G. Förster: 1930–1941. (= Volume 3 & 4) Die Buchmacherei, Berlin 2016

Web links

• Literature by and about Charles Bettelheim in the catalog of the German National Library
• Charles Bettelheim: On the Nature of Soviet Society (pdf) (78 kB)

notes

1. ^ Förster in the translator database of the VdÜ