He has done research on societies in the transition phase from capitalism to socialism.
French economist. He has worked on planning and socialist countries and has conducted research on societies in the transition phase from capitalism to socialism. Born in Paris, Charles Bettelheim graduated from the University of Paris in 1931 and after receiving his doctorate in economics from the same university in 1939, he started to work as a lecturer at the University of Caen. He worked as the director of the Center for International Relations and Social Research at the Ministry of Labor between 1944-1948, as a lecturer at the Ecole Nationale d'Organisation Economique et Sociale between 1945-1950, and at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration between 1948-1952. Charles Bettelheim, who served as Director of Research at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes after 1948, has also continued his teaching at the Institut d'Etude du Developpment Economique et Sociale since 1958. Charles Bettelheim, who was also the director of the Center d'Etudes de Planification Socialiste, was also the editor of the journal Problemes de planification. He has worked as a consultant in countries such as India, Cambodia, Algeria, Guinea, Mali, Cuba, and Egypt, and has been to the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China for research purposes.
Charles Bettelheim, who dealt with planning problems until the 1960s, began to deal with the problems of the transition from capitalism to socialism, especially in the second half of the 1960s. In this regard, he was greatly influenced by Althusser and Balibar's work on the Marxist method, on the one hand, and by his observations and experiences on the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, on the other. In his book, La Transition vers l'Economie Socialiste (Problems of Transition to Socialist Economy), which collects some of his works published between 1962 and 1967, he reveals the relationship between the existence of economic units that work relatively independently of each other, despite economic planning in countries in the transition to socialism, where commodity and money relations are maintained. In the analysis here, he explains the existence of commodity, money, and wage relations with the existence of real social relations independent of human will. For this reason, he emphasizes that commodity and money relations cannot be abolished without changing social relations.
In the last chapter and the preface of this book, written in 1967, Charles Bettelheim mentions that the transition to socialism is not a one-way street, in fact, it would be more correct to talk about the transition between capitalism and socialism. According to him, this transition can lead society to socialism as well as a return to capitalism. Charles Bettelheim calls this last situation "state capitalism".
The Cultural Revolution that began in China in the second half of the 1960s and the Czechoslovak event in 1968 greatly influenced Bettelheim's thoughts and work. On the one hand, he tried to identify and produce the necessary concepts and categories to analyze the social formations in the transitional phase between capitalism and socialism. On the other hand, he started to examine Soviet society by making use of these studies.
His book Calcul Economique et Formes de Propriete (Forms of Economic Calculation and Property), published in 1970, is the result of his first such studies. Charles Bettelheim presents here the meaning of monetary and economic calculation in transitional societies, the conditions of existence, and the effects of commodity relations. For him, a successful transition requires certain forms of transformation of economic, political, and ideological relations. These transformations can only be realized as a result of the class struggle. At the end of this conceptualization and theorizing, Bettelheim's assessment of the Soviet Union is that the transition was not successful and state capitalism existed in this country.
Les Luttes de Classes en URSS (Class Struggles in the Soviet Union) deals with how this situation came about and in what kind of historical process it emerged. In the preface to the first volume of this work, Charles Bettelheim summarizes how transitional societies should be studied and his assessments of Soviet society. Accordingly, in order to examine transitional societies in a healthy way, first of all, it is necessary to get rid of three fundamental mistakes that have been repeated so often.
According to Bettelheim, the revolutionary forces in Russia were both too weak and had no historical experience to rely on, to overcome the very complex and difficult problems they faced in replacing the old order with a new, truly socialist society. For this reason, they largely preserved the tsarist bureaucracy. The existence of the bourgeois state apparatus in this form created a fertile environment for the re-emergence and preservation of bourgeois relations. Bourgeois attitudes and relations continued in agriculture and industry. The hierarchical division of labor, the privileged status of experts, the bonus system, and financial incentives were maintained during the NEP (1921-1929) period and strengthened in the planned period. Privileges created in the past for accumulation have officially become part of the system of social relations. Party leaders, who were aware of the situation at the beginning, later lost this understanding and revisionism became the official ideology. The Communist Party is now trying to strengthen the system, not fix it. Charles Bettelheim explains the reason for these developments as follows: While the seizure of the state by the revolution and the change of the property system create the preconditions for a radical change in the relations of production, fundamental changes can be achieved as a result of slow, long and complex struggles. Charles Bettelheim calls this the class struggle. According to him, this new type of class struggle includes the efforts of those who have power and privilege in the state and economy after the revolution to find new ways of maintaining and consolidating their position in society. Class struggle in post-revolutionary society tends to focus on the real inequalities that separate groups with positions different from the social division of labor. Those who have a privileged position try to strengthen and legitimize their position. Opposite them are the working class and peasants who aim to abolish all privileges and class differentiation. The most important area in which this class struggle is carried on is the party.
According to Bettelheim, the Soviet Union is a class society, with the state bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the proletariat on the other, who have to sell their labor in order to survive, are exploited and lose their control over the labor process. The laws of capitalist accumulation and profitability in the plans determine how the productive forces will be used. What emerges is a kind of capitalist society in which basically capitalist relations prevail. Charles Bettelheim calls this "state capitalism". According to him, there is no need to be pessimistic about the future. Because the class struggle of the workers and peasants continues, eventually these classes will regain their power and begin to establish socialism.
Bettelheim's most important contribution is his examination of the conditions of existence and effects of commodity relations in social formations in the transition phase from capitalism to socialism. In doing so, however, it does not introduce a clear and well-defined concept of a "socialist mode of production". The concept of "state capitalism" used by Bettelheim to characterize the Soviet Union and other socialist countries in Europe has not been theoretically clarified and freed from its contradictions.
Works of Charles Bettelheim
Soviet Planning
German Economy under Nazism, 1983
Theoretical and Practical Problems of Planning
Balance Sheet of the French Economy 1919-1946
Outline of European Economics
Soviet Economy
Studies on Planning Theory
Some Basic Planning Issues
Independent India
The Foundation of Socialism in China, 1967
Accelerating Growth with Planning
Problems of Transition to a Socialist Economy, 1970
Some Current Problems of Socialism with Documents
Forms of Economic Calculation and Ownership
The Cultural Revolution and the Organization of Chinese Industry
Class Struggles in the USSR: First Period 1917-1923
Class Struggle in the USSR: The Second Period 1923-1930
Class Struggles in the USSR: The Third Period 1930-1939