{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":176,"pdf_page":176,"physical_index":176,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"0c6ecf83f123fc91e4888074992a6ac0837bf2ad564efcf4a1c261d22ebb3b8b"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Soviet economy was still less than half the size of its then main military competitor, the US. Indeed, in some ways the pressures grew greater. At the beginning of industrialisation, there were enormous reserves of labour that could be released for industry from agriculture. That meant it was not of any great concern to those at the top of the bureaucracy if much of this labour was used wastefully. It started to matter as the countryside began to empty of young men-leaving much of the agricultural production needed to feed the cities to be done by diminishing numbers of ageing people. The slave labour camps were run down soon after Stalin's death in 1 953, in part for political reasons but also to release inefficient slave labour for efficient exploitation as wage labour. It was an indication that the phase of \"primitive accumulation\" was at an end. There was recurrent talk within official circles from that time onwards about economic \"reform\". During one such phase, in 1970, the leader Leonid Brezhnev spelt out the rationale:\n\nComrade Brezhnev dwelt on the question of the economic competition between the two world systems. \"This competition takes different forms,\" he said. \"In many cases we are coping successfully with the task of overtaking and outdistancing the capitalist countries in the production of certain types of output . . . but the fundamental question is not only how much you produce but also at what cost, with what outlays of labour . . . It is in this field that the centre of gravity between the two systems lies in our time\" .45\n\nThis was the same logic of competitive accumulation that operated on the sometimes huge state sector of the Western industrial capitalisms-or, for that matter, on the giant corporations described by Galbraith. The organisation of production inside the USSR might involve the putting together of different use values (so much labour, so many physically distinct raw materials, such and such a particular sort of machine) to produce further use values. But what mattered to the ruling bureaucracy was how these use values measured up to the similar conglomerations of use values produced inside the great corporations of the West. And that meant comparing the amounts of labour used in the USSR to the labour used in the Western corporations. Or, to put it in Marx's terms, production within the USSR was subject to the law of value operating on the global scale.46\n\n176\n\nCapitalism in the 20th Century","previous_page":175,"next_page":177}