In discussing the community of states I am trying to counteract the familiar attempt to derive the nature of the state from dealing with states in isolation. This tendency leads in the direction either of the liberal market model of international relations or of the reductionist model that makes international relations a by-product of domestic production relations. If this atomist tendency has difficulty understanding the capitalist bloc, it has even more difficulty understanding the Soviet state and its foreign relations.

A clearer view of the USSR calls for taking two steps. First, the Soviet Union must be understood within the global economic framework, where states articulate their rivalries and their imperial ambitions. Second – and here I come to the step peculiar to the USSR – the Soviet Union must be seen to have an economy whose goals make reference to the encircling capitalist economy. Having such goals makes not just the Soviet economy but also the Soviet state different from capitalist economies and states. Their status is that of an other in relation to capitalism and its states.

Between socialism and capitalism

Before trying to show why I think the Soviet economy is internally related to capitalism, I shall explore some consequences of this view. It leads us to reject some rather familiar views of the Soviet system. On the one hand, it precludes our thinking of the system of the Soviet Union as a socialist system.