{"id":497,"date":"2016-11-14T11:37:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T15:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=497"},"modified":"2016-11-14T11:37:13","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T15:37:13","slug":"searching-for-capitalism-in-russia-and-the-soviet-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2016\/11\/14\/searching-for-capitalism-in-russia-and-the-soviet-union\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for \u201cCapitalism\u201d in Russia and the Soviet Union"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DENI-PC-3132,<\/a>

Viktor Deni, “The League of Nations: \u00a0Capitalists of All Countries, Unite!” (1919 poster)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Luke Stanek<\/p>\n

The word \u201ccapitalism\u201d is used constantly in contemporary American political discourse, mostly with positive connotation, to describe either the American system of governance and economics, or some ideal to attain through that system.\u00a0 But when the word originally arrived on American shores, it was met with worry and caution, and even rejected by President Hoover as a negative term.\u00a0 So how did the word transform from a negative to positive connotation, and how do we define it in order to better understand how it was used in the past and how it is used today?\u00a0 Steven Marks suggests that we look to Russia to help answer both of these questions.<\/p>\n

On Monday, November 7th<\/sup>, Dr. Marks, professor of History at Clemson University and a Miami alumnus, delivered the final lecture in this year\u2019s Havighurst Colloquia Series, which focused on the etymology of the term \u201ccapitalism\u201d and its usage in American and global political discourse.\u00a0 Marks argued that our mainstream understanding of \u201ccapitalism\u201d is conditioned by a fear of communism, and that to understand the concept we must understand how it first came into popular use.\u00a0 Coined in the 1850s, the term was first popularized by Russian populists in the 1870s to describe the system of economics and governance used by Western Europe and other imperial powers as something that was a danger to traditional folkways.\u00a0 After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the term quickly became one half of a dichotomy: the West\u2019s \u201ccapitalism\u201d to Russia\u2019s \u201ccommunism.\u201d\u00a0 It was in this sense that America was first exposed to the term, and it came to dominate our understanding of \u201ccapitalism\u201d throughout the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

Marks examined letters, newspaper articles, and speeches from prominent Americans who used the word \u201ccapitalism\u201d and found that in virtually every case, it was used with direct reference to Russia or communism, tinged with fear.\u00a0 It was this fear\u2014a fear of slipping towards a communist system\u2014that transformed \u201ccapitalism\u201d into a bastion of Americanism in the way that industrialism or the \u201cfree market\u201d had served previously.\u00a0 Marks discussed part of the transformation from negative to positive through the \u201cPeople\u2019s Capitalism\u201d campaign, which sought to soften the term and appropriate it for American use.\u00a0 If Bolshevism was the menace, then capitalism was the savior.\u00a0 On the flipside of the coin, Marks notes in his 2004 book How Russia Shaped the Modern World<\/em> that to anti-Westerns, Communist Russia was \u201cthe embodiment of higher truth, the bearer of light from the exotic East\u201d and would thus serve as a bastion of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism, and in that respect, anti-capitalism.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 This dichotomy became particularly pronounced during the Cold War, and the terms \u201ccapitalism\u201d and \u201ccommunism\u201d increasingly became catch-alls for the systems and ways of life of the two respective superpowers, used prolifically by both systems\u2019 governments and people.<\/p>\n

But even after the fall of the Soviet Union and the \u201cBolshevik menace,\u201d capitalism continued to be used in contrast to communism.\u00a0 As Marks noted, after the fall of the USSR, George H. W. Bush said that \u201ccapitalism builds upon human nature.\u00a0 Communism didn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0 Additionally, Marks argued that the idea that government intervention in the economy was anti-capitalist and a slippery slope toward communism (an idea popularized by Ayn Rand) continued to influence policy, including the deregulation of the financial industry and dismantling of the welfare system that was built to address the communist threat.\u00a0 But without a dichotomous counterpart, Marks questioned whether or not the term should be used so haphazardly, and suggested that we should redefine it for what it is<\/em>, rather than what it is not.<\/em>\u00a0 For Marks, what capitalism is<\/em> is a system in which there are free flows of information.\u00a0 The slippery slope, then, is not government intervention, but lack of transparency in that intervention: to the public, and to the world.<\/p>\n

Just as Peter Holquist suggested in his lecture last month that we should give credit to Russia for coining the term \u201ccrimes against humanity,\u201d Marks suggested that we should give credit to Russia for coining the term \u201ccapitalism\u201d:\u00a0 as his lecture title indicated, the word represents the USSR\u2019s \u201cgift\u201d to America. Whether or not we agree with his new definition of \u201ccapitalism,\u201d his lecture at least provokes the mind to question one of the most ubiquitous words in political discourse, rarely questioned as it is.\u00a0 If one finds Marks\u2019 new definition intriguing, then they should pick up a copy of his recently-published book on the subject: The Information Nexus<\/em>, and read about it in greater detail.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Steven Marks, How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism<\/em> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 275.<\/p>\n

Luke Stanek is a second-year MA student in History.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  By Luke Stanek The word \u201ccapitalism\u201d is used constantly in contemporary American political discourse, mostly with positive connotation, to describe either the American system of governance and economics, or some ideal to attain through that system.\u00a0 But when the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-lecture_reviews","category-miami-alumni","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}