SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
The sum total of all the acquired ideas, opinions, views, concepts, knowledge,
theories, dispositions, feelings, moods, abilities, skills, arts, practices, habits,
customs and traditions that exist among the individuals in a society and which reflect
the social being of its members (the material conditions of their lives).
SOCIAL CONTRACT
An idealist theory in which society, law and morality are the result of either a
conscious or implicit “contract” concluded among the people, or between the people and
the state. The idea is that humans have agreed to give up some of their personal freedoms
in exchange for a stable and secure political existence. This doctrine is historically
incorrect, in that (among other reasons) it supposes that human society existed in a
state of complete anarchy and bestiality (or alternately idyllic freedom according to
Rousseau) until the “contract” was concluded. It is a crude, early attempt to understand
how slave, feudal and bourgeois society could have developed. The view arose in antiquity
but received its greatest development with the rising bourgeoisie in
Hobbes, Locke and
Rousseau.
See also:
CONTRAT SOCIAL
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
1. A form of the liberal capitalist welfare state mascarading as genuine socialism.
2. Political parties and movements which have this reformist accomodation with capitalism
as their highest goal.
See also:
COMMUNISM—Aims Of
“In the past, social democracy called for using the state to offset,
correct, regulate, and otherwise manage the workings of capitalism. It sought a
capitalism with a human face: one with fewer inequalities of wealth, income, power,
and access to culture. The state was to manage capital investment, regulate markets,
and shape the distribution of income and wealth: all in the interest of a society
with a deeper and more widely shared sense of community. Economic growth and efficiency,
attributed to capitalism, were to be supported while state policy would prevent or
counteract the socially undesirable consequences of private capitalist production and
commodity markets. State interventionist capitalism was the solution; private
capitalism free if state controls and interventions was the problem.
“The social democratic solution
thus constrained what private capitalists could do in their profit-driven competition
with one another and their profit-driven relations with employees and customers. But
it left them in the position of receiving and dispensing enterprise profits. Social
democracy thus left private capitalists with the incentive to weaken, deflect, or
remove those constraints. It also provided capitalists with the means—their retained
profits—to do so. In a sense, this was the historic capitalist-socialist compromise
of the 19th and 20th centuries. Capitalists could keep their positions as receivers
and dispensers of enterprise profits, but the conditions of those positions would be
constrained by social(ist) welfare state policies.
“Whatever the benefits, this
historic compromise set the stage for new struggles. Welfare states became contested
terrains: social democrats sought to strengthen and expand them, while capitalists
sought to reduce, weaken, or eliminate them. From gains, the trend moved in the
direction that favored capitalists. The trend turned into a rout in the 1970s and has
remained so ever since. The capitalists used their profits to improve their business
prospects and performance by, among other strategies, undoing welfare statism. By
lobbying, moving production outside national borders, immigration, common markets,
media campaigns, and countless other mechanisms, the capitalists succeeded in bringing
social democracy to its current sorry state.
“Even where trade unions and
socialist and communist parties were strong, they proved no match for the profits
capitalists could use against them.” —Richard D. Wolff, Capitalism Hits the Fan
(2010), pp. 36-37. This is an outline of both the theory of social democracy
and of how history has fully demonstrated the flaw in that theory. Social democracy
has clearly been proven to be a major mistake, and a complete dead-end, for the
working class. Of course this inevitable result was already obvious to revolutionary
Marxists such as Marx, Engels and Lenin even at the very start of this whole
disastrous social democratic experiment!
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION (Britain)
A socialist organization in Britain in the late 19th century which later merged
with other forces and eventually developed into the Communist Party of Great Britain.
“The Social-Democratic Federation was founded in 1884. Among
the leaders there were reformists (Hyndman & Co.),
anarchists and revolutionary Social-Democrats, supporters of Marxism (Harry Quelch,
Tom Mann, Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx and others); the last-named group constituted
the Left wing of the socialist movement in Britain. Engels criticized the Social-Democratic
Federation sharply for dogmatism and sectarianism and for its lack of contact with the
mass working-class movement in Britain and ignoring of the specific features of that
movement. In 1907 the Social-Democratic Federation was renamed the Social-Democratic
Party which in 1911, together with Left elements from the
Independent Labour Party, founded the
British Socialist Party; in 1920 most of the members of that party helped found the
Communist Party of Great Britain.” —Footnote 47, Lenin: SW I (1967).
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY — Dresden Congress (1903)
“The Dresden Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party was
held between September 13 and September 20, 1903. The main question discussed at the
Congress was the tactics of the Party and the struggle against revisionism. The
revisionist views of E. Bernstein, P. Göhre, E. David, Wolfgang Heine and a few
other German Social-Democrats were criticized by the Congress. A resolution adopted by
an overwhelming majority (288 against 11) said that the Party Congress most decisively
condemned the revisionist efforts to alter the former tried and tested tactics of the
Party, based on the class struggle, tactics that required the winning of political
power by the overthrow of the ruling classes and not by adaptation to the existing
system. The adoption of this resolution had a certain significance in the positive
sense. The Congress, however, was not consistent in the struggle against revisionism;
the revisionists among the German Social-Democrats were not expelled from the Party
and after the Congress continued to spread their opportunist views.” —Footnote 199,
Lenin: SW I (1967).
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY — Chemnitz Congress (1912)
“The Chemnitz Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party,
September 15-21, 1912; the Congress adopted a resolution on imperialism that described
the policy of the imperialist states as ‘a shameless policy of plunder and annexation’
and called upon the Party to ‘struggle against imperialism with redoubled energy’.”
—Footnote 321, Lenin: SW I (1967).
SOCIAL FASCIST
A person, party, movement or ideology, which is socialist or communist in name, but
which in actuality operates in a fascist manner towards
the masses. Most revisionist political parties in power are
social fascists to one degree or another. For example, during the revisionist period of rule
in the Soviet Union (i.e., its last 35 years or so), the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
was a social-fascist political party. In India the so-called Communist Party of India
(Marxist) [or CPM] is a social-fascist party, as its rule and oppression of the masses in
the state of West Bengal has amply demonstrated. (See:
HERMAD)
SOCIAL JUSTICE INDEX
[Refer to large chart at the right:] This is a comparison of levels of equality and social
justice within the different member countries of the OECD. Of
course no country under capitalism, even the best of them, will have anything close to true
equality or genuine social justice. But this chart demonstrates that many countries,
including those in Scandinavia, rate much higher than the richest imperialist countries, and
especially as compared to the United States. The U.S., though the richest of all countries,
is one of the worst as far as the contrast of wealth and poverty goes; and the current
trend is for it to get worse yet.
SOCIAL SCIENCE
See also:
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM,
SOCIOLOGY
“Now—since the appearance of [Marx’s] Capital—the materialist
conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition.
And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning
and development of some formation of society—formation of society, mind you, and not
the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc.—another attempt just as
capable of introducing order into the ‘pertinent facts’ as materialism is, that is just
as capable of presenting a living picture of a definite formation, while giving it a
strictly scientific explanation—until then the materialist conception of history will
be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not ‘primarily a scientific conception
of history,’ as [the Narodnik] Mr. Mikhailovsky thinks, but the only scientific
conception of it.” —Lenin, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are” (1894), LCW 1:142.
SOCIALISM (Socialist Society)
An intermediate and transitional form of society between
capitalism and communism,
characterized in its economic aspect by the principle “From each according to his ability,
to each according to his work,” and characterized in its political aspect by the genuine
control and rule of society by the revolutionary proletariat and its party or parties.
Socialism is still a form of class society,
where class struggle still exists, and bourgeois and proletarian ideology and tendencies
still do battle. The ruling class in a genuine socialist society is the proletariat. But
many countries call (or have called) themselves socialist even though the proletariat
either never had power, or else no longer has power, and where society is not (or is no
longer) advancing towards communism (e.g., China after Mao’s death in 1976).
SOCIALISM — Contradictions Within
[Intro to be added...]
“Any kind of world, and of course class society in particular,
teems with contradictions. Some say that there are contradictions to be ‘found’
in socialist society, but I think this is a wrong way of putting it. The point is
not that there are contradictions to be found, but that it teems with contradictions.
There is no place where contradictions do not exist...” —Mao, “A Dialectical
Approach to Inner-Party Unity” (Nov. 18, 1957), SW5:516.
SOCIALIST-REVOLUTIONARY PARTY
“[A] petty-bourgeois party in Russia, which came into being at the
end of 1901 and beginning of 1902 as a result of a merger of various
Narodnik groups and circles. The S.R.s [Pronounced
ess-airs in Russian. —S.H.] saw no class distinctions between the proletarian and
the petty proprietor, played down the class differentiation and antagonisms within the
peasantry, and refused to recognize the proletariat’s leading role in the revolution.
Their views were an eclectic mixture of the ideas of Narodism and revisionism. In
Lenin’s words, they tried to mend ‘the rents in the Narodnik ideas with bits of
fashionable opportunist “criticism” of Marxism.’ [LCW 9:310]
“The Socialist-Revolutionaries
agrarian programme envisaged the abolition of private ownership of the land, which
was to be transferred to the village commune on the basis of the ‘labor principle’
and ‘equalized land tenure’, and also the development of co-operatives. This
programme, which the S.R.s called ‘socialization of the land’, had nothing socialist
about it. In his analysis of this programme, Lenin showed that the preservation of
commodity production and private farming on communal land would not do away with the
domination of capital or free the toiling peasantry from exploitation and
impoverishment. Neither could the co-operatives be a remedy for the small farmers
under capitalism, as they served only to enrich the rural bourgeoisie. At the same
time, as Lenin pointed out, the demand for equalized land tenure, though not
socialistic, was of a progressive, revolutionary-democratic character, inasmuch as
it was directed against reactionary landlordism.
“The Bolshevik Party exposed
the attempts of the S.R.s to pass themselves off as socialists. It waged a stubborn
fight against them for influence over the peasantry, and revealed the damage their
tactic of individual terrorism was causing the working-class movement. At the same
time, the Bolsheviks, on definite terms, entered into temporary agreements with the
Socialist-Revolutionaries to combat tsarism.
“The Socialist-Revolutionary
Party’s political and ideological instability and organizational incohesion, as well
as its constant vacillation between the liberal bourgeoisie and the proletariat,
were due to the absence of class homogeneity among the peasantry. During the first
Russian revolution [1905-07], the Right wing of the S.R.s broke away from the party
and formed the legal Labor Popular Socialist Party, whose views were close to those
of the Constitutional-Democrats (Cadets), while the Left wing split away and formed
a semi-anarchist league of ‘Maximalists’. During the period of the
Stolypin reaction, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party suffered
a complete break-down ideologically and organizationally. During the First World War
most of its members took a social-chauvinist stand.
“After the February
bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, together
with the Mensheviks and Cadets, were the mainstay of the counter-revolutionary
Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie and landlords. The leaders of the S.R.
Party—Kerensky, Avksentyev and Chernov—were members of this Cabinet. The S.R. Party
refused to support the peasants’ demand for the abolition of landlordism, and stood
for the preservation of landlord ownership. The S.R. members of the Provisional
Government authorized punitive action against peasants who had seized landed
estates.
“At the end of November 1917
the Left wing of the S.R. Party formed an independent party of Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries, who, in an endeavor to preserve their influence among the
peasant masses, formally recognized Soviet rule and entered into an agreement with
the Bolsheviks. Shortly [after], however, they began a struggle against the Soviets.
“During the years of foreign
intervention and the Civil War the S.R.s carried on counter-revolutionary subversive
activities. They actively supported the interventionists and whiteguards, took part
in counter-revolutionary plots, and organized terroristic acts against leaders of the
Soviet state and the Communist Party. [Including an attempt to assassinate Lenin
which did succeed in severely wounding him. —S.H.] After the Civil War, the S.R.s
continued their anti-Soviet activities within the country and in the camp of the
White émigrés.” —Note 14, LCW 20:566-567.
SOCRATES (469-399 BCE)
Famous ancient Greek idealist philosopher and ideologist of
the slave-owning aristocracy. He was immortalized by his disciple Plato
in a series of dialogues, in which Socrates is the dominant participant. However, it has
never been clear to what extent the words of the character Socrates in these dialogues
actually express the views of Plato rather than the historical Socrates.
It seems most likely that Socrates was a
critic of democracy (even within just the slave-owning aristocracy), and for a time a
group of tyrants led by some of his former students overthrew the democracy in Athens. No
doubt partly because of this, some time after democracy was restored he was brought to
trial on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth, was found guilty and was sentenced
to death. He was given the opportunity to flee, but chose instead to stay and voluntarily
drank the poison hemlock.
Socrates had some personal virtues,
including modesty and intellectual honesty. (This is brought out well in a nice story
written by Bertolt Brecht, “Socrates Wounded”.) But politically and philosophically he was
actually a reactionary idealist, and the veneration of him down through the ages cannot
really be justified.
See also:
Philosophical doggerel
about Socrates.
SOPHISTS
“Sophists (from the Greek sophos—a wise man)—the
designation (since the second half of the 5th century B.C.) for professional
philosophers, teachers of philosophy and rhetoric. The Sophists did not constitute
a single school. The most characteristic feature common to Sophists was their belief
in the relativity of all human ideas, ethical standards and value, expressed by
Protagoras in the following famous statement: ‘Man is the measure of all things,
of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not.’ In the first half of
the 4th century B.C., sophism disintegrated and degenerated into a barren play with
logical conceptions.” —Note 92, LCW 38.
SOUL
[In religion:] An imagined immaterial
essence of a human being which God supposedly “puts into” the body at conception or birth
(or sometime in between!), and which “leaves” the body at death to go to heaven or hell or
some other “place”. It is hard for a materialist not to simply guffaw at such a primitive,
absurd and unscientific notion.
[In older philosophical speculation:] An
alternative name for what is now more usually called the mind.
[In wider use:] Because of humanity’s
religious past, the word ‘soul’ is also used even by non-religious people, but in more
rational (if still somewhat poetic) ways, as in describing the essential aspect or nature
of something as its “soul”. Example: “Her hard work and dedication make her the soul of the
strike support committee.”
See also:
SPIRIT
[Speaking of the “soul” in the sense of the human mind:]
“The metaphysician-psychologist argues about the nature of the soul. Here it is
the method itself that is absurd. You cannot argue about the soul without having
explained psychical processes in particular: here progress must consist precisely
in abandoning general theories and philosophical discourses about the nature of the
soul, and in being able to put the study of the facts about particular psychical
processes on a scientific footing. Therefore, [the Narodnik]
Mr. Mikhailovsky’s accusation [against Marx] is exactly similar to that of a
metaphysician-psychologist, who has spent all his life writing ‘investigations’ into
the nature of the soul (without knowing exactly how to explain a single psychical
phenomenon, even the simplest), and then starts accusing a scientific psychologist
of not having reviewed all the known theories of the soul. He, the scientific
psychologist, has discarded philosophical theories of the soul and set about making
a direct study of the material substratum of psychical phenomena—the nervous
processes—and has produced, let us say, an analysis and explanation of some one or
more psychological processes.” —Lenin, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are” (1894),
LCW 1:144.
SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS
“Sovereign debt” is debt which is incurred by a country (or sovereign power). Or in other
words, debt which is incurred by some government or governmental entity which has the legal
right to borrow money in the name of the people of some country or region, and whose people
then have the legal obligation to repay that debt. This debt is most commonly in the form
of bonds which the government issues. A sovereign debt crisis, is
therefore a financial crisis wherein a country has borrowed too much money, is at risk of
defaulting on the loans it has already received (or the bonds it has already issued), and
is thus unable to easily borrow more money, except possibly at extremely high interest
rates. Generally a country in this situation must either be “bailed out” by other governments
or international agencies such as the IMF; pay off the debt by just
printing money (which results in inflation); or else must simply default. If it defaults,
however, it will be considered a bad credit risk and will no longer be able to borrow money
in the future, at least until it comes to terms with other countries or the IMF.
See also:
EUROPEAN SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS
SOVIET UNION — Economic Crisis In
[Intro to be added... ]
“By the 1970s the signs of deteriorating economic performance were
accumulating rapidly. Most prominent was a steady and continuing slowdown in rates of
annual economic growth, from a respectable 5 percent in the 1960s to 3 percent in the
1970s to 2 percent or less in the early 1980s. The growth of consumption likewise
slowed amid periodic shortages, longer lines, and endless complaints about the declining
availability and quality of consumer goods. Most Soviet consumers came to depend on
the black market, or ‘second economy,’ which expanded greatly in the 1970s. Social
indicators such as declining life expectancy for males and rising infant mortality rates
gave added support to those who saw crisis in the making. Perhaps most embarrassing of
all was the growing technological gap between the Soviet Union and the West. In 1987
the USSR had some two hundred thousand micro-computers; the United States more than
twenty-five million. Even some of the newly industrializing countries such as Taiwan
and South Korea surpassed the USSR in certain areas of technological development.
Massive Soviet dependence on grain imports beginning in the 1970s was a further
embarrassing sign of economic weakness.” —Robert Strayer, Why Did the Soviet Union
Collapse? (1998), p. 57.
SOVIET UNION — Security Agencies
There were a series of different security agencies (or at least different names) during the
existence of the Soviet Union, including the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, and then after Stalin’s death
the KGB.
The Cheka (or Vecheka), was set up in
December 1917 to defend the October Revolution and the young revolutionary government against
the continuing attacks by its enemies, the overthrown Tsarist aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.
Counter-revolutionary activity was forcefully suppressed, and enemy agents were rounded up
and imprisoned or executed. The urgency of this task became all the greater as the “White”
forces launched a civil war against the revolution; as the short-term Bolshevik allies the
“Left Socialist Revolutionaries” turned against the revolution (and attempted to assassinate
Lenin and did assassinate other Bolsheviks); and as numerous foreign imperialist powers
employed counter-revolutionary agents and invaded Russia with their armies. ‘Cheka’ is the
shortened Russian abbreviation of the official name, which translates as the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.
The Cheka could certainly be ruthless, as was
necessary given that the country was in the midst of a ferocious class war that was
extraordinarily ruthless on the part of the enemy. But it was kept under the political control
of the Bolsheviks led by Lenin, though this was somewhat difficult due to the decentralized
structure of the Cheka and the chaos of the times. The head of the Cheka, appointed by Lenin,
was the sincere and genuine Polish Marxist revolutionary, Felix Dzerzhinsky. Unfortunately
such principled political leadership of the security agencies did not continue after
Dzerzhinsky’s death in 1926.
The Cheka was as much a Party organization as
a state agency, but in 1922 its functions were assumed by the State Political Administration
(GPU). In 1923 the GPU was renamed OGPU (the Unified GPU). Vyacheslav Menzhinsky became head
of the OGPU when Dzerzhinsky died, and until his own death in 1934. However, he was long in
poor health and much of the actual control of the OGPU was in the hands of Menzhinsky’s deputy,
Genrikh Yagoda. The OGPU was under the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), and
therefore the security agencies were often called the NKVD rather than OGPU. By 1928 Stalin
was in complete control of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, and therefore also of the NKVD and
OGPU. During this period the NKVD/OGPU implemented (on Stalin’s orders) the ruthless
collectivization of agriculture (completely failing to use the mass
line) and greatly extended the system of forced labor in prison labor camps. Stalin had
Yagoda replaced by Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD in 1936 and then executed Yagoda in
1938. Although Yezhov denounced Yagoda for carrying out the Great Terror, he then supervised
the even greater period of terror from 1937-38 which is sometimes called the Yezhovshchina
(Yezhov era). Stalin then had Yezhov himself executed in 1940.
In 1941, under the new chairman Lavrenti
Beria, the OGPU was renamed the People’s Commissariat for State Security (NKGB), still within
the NKVD. Further changes of names and organizational relationships occurred in the period
after World War II, but with Beria still in overall charge. In 1953, after Stalin’s death,
and fearful of a coup d’état by Beria, Khrushchev and the other new leaders of the
CPSU had Beria arrested and soon executed. The security organizations were reshuffled and in
1954 renamed the KGB [Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti or Committee for State
Security]. This organization and name remained in place throughout the entire revisionist
and state capitalist era of the Soviet Union, until its final collapse in 1991. The KGB was
then split and reorganized into the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB)
and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) which continue in post-Soviet Russia.
See also:
KGB, NKVD,
OKHRANA, SECRET POLICE
SOVIETS (Councils)
The word ‘soviet’ means “council” in Russian. During the 1905 Revolution councils,
or Soviets, were first formed in a major way by the workers, peasants and soldiers
to represent their revolutionary interests. After the defeat of the 1905 Revolution these
Soviets mostly ceased functioning. But with the overthrow of the Tsar in the
February Revolution, they sprang suddenly back
into existence as an even greater force. During the course of 1917 they settled down into
being the primary representatives of the workers in their day-to-day struggles against the
capitalists, of the peasants against the landlords, of the ordinary soldiers against the
officer corps, and of all the masses against the flaky bourgeois Provisional Government.
Lenin understood the nature of the situation, that despite the current practice of the
Soviets as reformist or union-type organizations, they in effect formed a
dual power along with the formal Russian government. He
further recognized that because of this, and because the workers, peasants and soldiers
viewed the Soviets as their own organizations which truly did represent their interests
(unlike the government), that an insurrection could be led with a central slogan being “All
power to the Soviets!” And, of course, Lenin proved to be correct in his assessment.
The strategy of working toward the formation
of “soviets” or councils of workers in other countries as a step toward revolution has so
far not been successful, though it was widely attempted—especially in the first decades
after the Bolshevik Revolution. However, in the
advanced capitalist world no other strategy has worked so far either, and it is still quite
possible that something like workers’ councils will once again prove quite useful in
promoting revolution.
SOVKHOZ [Plural: SOVKHOZY]
[Russian: Literally ‘soviet farm’] State farms in the Soviet Union, or sometimes similar
farms in other countries, as contrasted with kolkhozy
(collective farms).
The workers on these state farms were
called and viewed as just that—workers, and not peasants. They were paid wages,
as opposed to the cooperative-style sharing of production on the kolkhozy. But in some
ways there were still feudal aspects (sometimes described by critics as “neo-serfdom”) to
the workers’ existence on both sovkhozy and kolkhozy. The system of internal passports
prevented even the workers on state farms from leaving that work and moving to the city
for manufacturing jobs.
A state-appointed director managed each
sovkhoz, and capital investment funds mostly came from the state. The state usually paid
less for produce and crops raised on sovkhozy than they did for the same crops raised by
kolkhozy. But due to the greater capital investment, the larger size and usually greater
efficiency of the sovkhozy, at least in the period after World War II these state farms
where overall in a better position financially.
Sovkhozy were first created in the early
1920s, generally on large estates formerly belonging to the Tsar or other nobility. The
kolkhozy, in contrast, were generally organized through the collectivization of numerous
small peasant holdings. Kolkhozy were viewed (quite appropriately) as intermediate forms
between individual private farming of land and the more fully socialist state farms, and
it was originally expected that all the kolkhozy would be transformed into sovkhozy in a
short time. However, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, kolkhozy became viewed as
more important than previously and for a while their transformation into sovkhozy was
drastically slowed down. Still the long-term trend was toward the transformation of
cooperative farms into state farms, and this rate of transformation became faster after
World War II. The revisionists, who seized power in the mid-1950s, continued this
transformation policy, but not for ideological reasons. They viewed state farms as more
profitable.
The number of sovkhozy in the Soviet
Union grew from about 1,500 in 1929 to over 23,000 by the late 1980s. The size of state
farms also grew, though even in the mid-1920s they were sometimes of enormous size. In
the 1930s the average sown area of state farms was about 3,600 hectares (6,000 acres),
and by the 1980s the average sown area had grown to 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres). In
1990, near the end of the existence of the U.S.S.R., sovkhozy were 45% of the total
number of state and collective farms added together. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union, and amidst the general transformation state capitalism into Western-style
monopoly capitalism, many state farms were reorganized as capitalist corporations.
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