Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:48:37.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Proletarian Ethic and Soviet Industrialization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Timothy W. Luke
Timothy W. Luke*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Instituteand State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Conventional comparisons of national industrialization strategies place a strong emphasis on the cultural development of a modern ethic of work performance as an important component of effectively attaining industrial growth. In the case of Czarist and Soviet Russia, most studies maintain that Russian workers are exceptional inasmuch as they have always lacked a modern work ethic and therefore remain necessarily less productive than the more ethically disciplined work forces of Europe, Japan, and North America. However, such studies fail to deal with the problems of Soviet industrialization and distort the actual historical processes of Western capitalist industrialization. This analysis argues that a modern work ethic has developed within the Soviet workplace since 1917. it maintains that the social origins of this cultural code of disciplined labor are to be found, in large part, in the cultural values and group practices of the radical Russian intelligentsia before 1914, a group that provided the concrete class bases of the Bolshevik reconstitution of Marxism as a culture-transforming ideology for industrializing Russia.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 588 - 601
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Apter, D. The politics of modernization, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Baumgarten, F. Arbeitswissenschaft und Psychotechnik in Russland. Munich, 1924.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, D. Ten theories in search of reality: the prediction of Soviet behavior in the social sciences. World Politics. 1958, 10, 327–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bendix, R. Work and authority in industry: ideologies of management in the course of industrialization. New York: Harper and Row, 1956.Google Scholar
Bendix, R. Embattled reason: essays on social knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Berlin, P. A. Russakaya burzhuaziya v staroe i novoe vremya. Moscow, 1922.Google Scholar
Bettelheim, E. Class struggles in the USSR, first period: 1917–1923. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Bill, V. The forgotten class. New York: Praeger, 1959.Google Scholar
Borisova, Y. S., et al. An outline history of the Soviet working class. Moscow, 1973.Google Scholar
Brodersen, A. The Soviet worker. New York: Random House, 1966.Google Scholar
Brugmann, U. Die Russischen Gewerkschaften in Revolution und Burgerkrieg 1917–1919. Berlin, 1973.Google Scholar
Brzezinski, Z. The permanent purge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buber, M. Paths in Utopia. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949.Google Scholar
Bukharin, N., & Preobrazhensky, I. In Carr, E. H. (Ed.). The ABC of communism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Google Scholar
Bulgakov, S. Heroism and asceticism. In Shragin, B. & Todd, A. (Eds.). Landmarks. New York: Karz Howard, 1977, pp. 23–63.Google Scholar
Conquest, R. Industrial workers in the USSR. New York: Praeger, 1970.Google Scholar
Chernyshevsky, N. G. Polnoye sobraniye sochinenii v 10-i tomakh. Saint Petersburg, 1906.Google Scholar
Daniels, R. V. The nature of communism. New York: Vintage, 1962.Google Scholar
Deutscher, I. Soviet trade unions. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1950.Google Scholar
Fainsod, M. How Russia is ruled. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953.Google Scholar
Fischer, G. Russian liberalism: from gentry to intelligentsia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fülop-Miller, R. The mind and face of Bolshevism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928.Google Scholar
Gastev, A. K. How work should be performed. Moscow, 1922.Google Scholar
Gella, A. (Ed.). The intelligentsia and the intellectuals: theory, method and case study. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1976.Google Scholar
George, C. H., & George, K. The Protestant mind of the English Reformation, 1570–1640. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerschenkron, A. Economic backwardness in historical perspective. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Gerschenkron, A. Europe in the Russian mirror: four lectures in Russian history. London: Cambridge University Press, 1970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gooch, G. P. English democratic ideas in the seventeenth century (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927.Google Scholar
Gouldner, A. W. Prologue to a theory of revolutionary intellectuals. Telos, 1975/1976, 26, 3–36.Google Scholar
Gouldner, A. The future of intellectuals and the rise of the new class. New York: Seabury, 1979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gurian, W. Bolshevism: theory and practice. New York: Macmillan, 1932.Google Scholar
Haimson, L. The Russian Marxists and the origins of Bolshevism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Hill, C. Puritanism and revolution. London: Seeker and Warburg, 1969.Google Scholar
Hill, C. Society and puritanism in pre-revolutionary England. London: Schocken Books, 1964.Google Scholar
Hoffman, W. Die Arbeitsverfassung der Sowjetunion. Berlin, 1956.Google Scholar
Izgoev, A. On educated youth. In Shragin, B. & Todd, A. (Eds.). Landmarks. New York: Karz Howard, 1977, pp. 88–111.Google Scholar
Jasny, N. The socialized agriculture of the USSR. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution, 1949.Google Scholar
Kaplan, F. Bolshevik ideology and the ethics of Soviet labor, 1917–1920: the formative years. New York: Philosophical Library, 1968.Google Scholar
Kautsky, J. H. From proletarianism to modernizing movement. In Communism and the politics of development. New York: John Wiley, 1968, pp. 56–102.Google Scholar
Konrad, G., & Szelenyi, I. The intellectuals on the road to class power. (Arato, A. & Allen, R. E., trans.). New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1979.Google Scholar
Kravchinsky, S. Podpol'naya Rossiya. Moscow, 1906.Google Scholar
Krupskaya, N. K. Memories of Lenin. (Verney, E., Ed. and trans.) New York: International Publishers, 1930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laski, H. Communism. London: Williams and Nor-gate, 1926.Google Scholar
Lemke, M. Politicheskiye protessy v Rossii 1860-kh gg. (2nd ed.). Moscow, 1923, Vol. 26, p. 412.Google Scholar
Lindsay, A. D. The modern democratic state. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. How to organize competition. In Collected works (Vol. 26). Moscow, 1964, pp. 404–415.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. Better fewer, but better. In Collected works (Vol. 33). Moscow, 1965a, pp. 487–502.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. From the destruction of the old social system to the creation of the new. In Collected works (Vol. 30). Moscow, 1965b.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. A great beginning. In Collected works (Vol. 29). Moscow, 1965c, pp. 404–434.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. The immediate tasks of the Soviet government. In Collected works (Vol. 27). Moscow, 1965d, pp. 235–277.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. On cooperation. In Collected works (Vol. 33). Moscow, 1966a, pp. 467–475.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. Theses on production propaganda. In Collected works (Vol. 31). Moscow, 1966b, pp. 404–406.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. Ueber wissenschaftliche Arbeitsorganization. Berlin, 1971.Google Scholar
Lenin, V. I. What is to be done. Peking, 1975.Google Scholar
Luke, T. W. The proletarian ethic and the ethos of communism: ideology in the political economy of Soviet industrialization. Unpublished thesis. Washington University, 1981.Google Scholar
Luke, T. W. Ideology and Soviet industrialization. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, in press.Google Scholar
Lyashchenko, P. Istoriya narodnovo khozyaistva SSSR (4th ed.). Moscow, 1956.Google Scholar
Mazlish, B. The revolutionary ascetic: evolution of a political type. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.Google Scholar
Mazzini, J. Faith and the future. In The duties of man. London: J.M. Dent, 1907, pp. 141–194.Google Scholar
Meyer, A. G. Leninism. New York: Praeger, 1962.Google Scholar
Mikhailovsky, N. J. Sochineniya. St. Petersburg, 1896.Google Scholar
Murvar, V. Messianism in Russia: religious and revolutionary. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1971, 10, 277–338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nisbet, R. The quest for community. London: Oxford University Press, 1953.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. The professions and social structure. In Essays in sociological theory (Rev. ed.). Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958, pp. 34–49.Google Scholar
Petybridge, R. The social prelude to Stalinism. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pipes, R. Russia under the Old Regime. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1974.Google Scholar
Pipes, R. (Ed.). The Russian intelligentsia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomper, P. The Russian revolutionary intelligentsia. Northbrook, Ill.: AHM Publishing, 1970.Google Scholar
Raeff, M. Origins of the Russian intelligentsia: the eighteenth century nobility. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966.Google Scholar
Rashin, A. G. Formirovanie Rabochego klassa Rossii. Moscow, 1958.Google Scholar
Russell, B. The practice and theory of Bolshevism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964.Google Scholar
Selznick, P. The organizational weapon: a study of Bolshevik strategy and tactics. New York: Free Press, 1952.Google Scholar
Skocpol, T. States and social revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szamuely, T. The Russian tradition. Conquest, R. (Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974.Google Scholar
Talmon, J. L. The origin of totalitarian democracy. London: Seeker and Warburg, 1951.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. The making of the English working class. London: V. Gollancz, 1963.Google Scholar
Tompkins, S. R. The Russian intelligentsia: makers of the revolutionary state. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Traub, R. Lenin, and Taylor, : The fate of “scientific management” in the (early) Soviet Union. Telos, 1978, 37, pp. 82–92.Google Scholar
Trotsky, L. Literature and revolution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Trotsky, L. The revolution betrayed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1937.Google Scholar
Tucker, R. C. On revolutionary mass movement regimes. In The Soviet political mind (Rev. ed.). Tucker, R. C. (Ed.). New York: W.W. Norton, 1971, pp. 3–19.Google Scholar
Tucker, R. C. Stalinism and comparative communism. In Stalinism: essays in historical interpretation, Tucker, R. C. (Ed.). New York: W.W. Norton, 1977a, pp. xi–xx.Google Scholar
Tucker, R. C. Stalinism as revolution from above. In Stalinism: essays in historical interpretation, Tucker, R. C. (Ed.). New York: W.W. Norton, 1977b, pp. 77–108.Google Scholar
Tugan, Baranovsky M. I. Russkaya fabrika v proshlom i nastoyashchem. St. Petersburg, 1907.Google Scholar
Walzer, M. The revolution of the saints. New York: Atheneum, 1969.Google Scholar
Weber, M. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1958.Google Scholar
Weber, M. The sociology of religion. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Wolfe, B. An ideology in power: refections on the Russian revolution. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960.Google Scholar
Zernov, N. The Russian religious renaissance of the twentieth century. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.Google Scholar
Zukin, S. The problem of social class under socialism. Theory and Society, 1978, 6, 391–427.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.