‘State Capitalism’ in the Soviet Union 
History of Economics Review
M.C. Howard and J.E. King*
 Introduction 
The aim of this paper is to explore the reactions to the Bolshevik Revolution of one group of critics from the left: those who saw it as ushering in a new form of capitalism. The controversy over state capitalism had both theoretical and practical significance. At the analytical level it presented an important test of Marx’s conception of historical materialism, which had been formulated in a largely successful attempt to explain the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe but had encountered difficulties when applied to other epochs and other continents. In political terms, the class character of the Soviet Union was a crucial question for those who wished to understand its internal dynamics, the nature of its contradictions and the potential that it offered for revolutionary change. It remained central, even after 1991, to any serious Marxian analysis of post-Mao China, though this is not a topic that we develop at any length here.