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#42 - JRL 2007-78 - JRL Home
From: "Stanislav Menchikov" <s.menchikov@chello.nl>
Subject: Book Announcement [The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism]
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007

My book The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism is now out in English. The English edition is substantially updated from the Russian book, which came out in 2004.

As a long time JRL participant and contributor, I hope I don't need much of an introduction. However, at least some of you might be interested to know what other people say about me on the back cover:

James Galbraith, Professor, the University of Texas at Austin: "Stanislav Menshikov has been our most astute observer of the Russian economy for many years. He saw that communism needed reform a generation ago, when it might have worked. He recognized the reforms after communism for the disaster they were. Now he gives a comprehensive account of the state of capitalism in today's Russia."

I believe that this new book will be useful to the reader in many ways. For the ordinary reader interested in Russia, it provides a comprehensive picture of how its economy is structured and how it works, as seen from the vantage point of a Russian expert with vast knowledge of the western world. In a sense it is like a small encyclopedia, covering all major sectors of the Russian economy from mining and manufacturing to banking and foreign trade, from GDP dynamics, income distribution, economic concentration and government policy, to the new bureaucracy and small business, the super-rich elite and the emerging middle class. The book is full of statistics and other useful data on all these and various other aspects the country's life. A helpful guide to understanding today's Russia.

The Russia expert will find in-depth analysis of the forces and processes that explain what is in store for Russia in the near and more distant future. Lop-sided development is traced to excessive economic over-concentration that restricts free competition and profitable investment in many sectors of the economy.

Here is the story of the new Russian oligarchs: who they are, and how they amassed their fabulous fortunes during the chaotic 1990s and still continue to do so today. As a result, the Russian economy has fallen into a trap, from which the only escape route leads through a fundamental break with the oligarchical system. Far from doing that, the current Russian administration is adding new government monopolies in oil and gas, as well as in industries associated with the military-industrial complex. It is less than certain that copying the Korean model of building up 'chaebol'-type concerns will work on Russian soil. However, the emerging Kremlin financial industrial group of President Vladimir Putin's second term undoubtedly represents a shift in another way - laying an economic foundation for a more authoritarian political regime. From this perspective, Russia's economic and political future, as well as its global role, do not look encouraging. Some of these developments may also promote centrifugal tendencies in the Russian Federation and endanger its unity.

In six chapters, The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism examines these difficult processes from different standpoints:

Chapter 1. A General Description of Russian Capitalism

1.1 Is this capitalism?

1.2 Bolshevism in reverse

1.3 The legacy of socialism

1.4 Directors turned into capitalists

1.5 Bankers as money-launderers

1.6 Socialism: another source of capital

1.7 Why not managerialism?

1.8 A historical reminiscence

1.9 Surplus value: a statistical study

1.10 The distribution of profit by sector

1.11 The nature of export superprofit

Chapter 2. The Composition of Capital

2.1 The accumulation of capital

2.2 Consume, or resell?

2.3 Where to hold capital: at home, or abroad?

2.4 The relationship of industrial and banking capital

2.5 The concentration of capital in the productive sector

2.6 Where the oil giants came from

2.7 The battle for metals

2.8 Sectors producing for the domestic market

2.9 The defense industry

2.10 The oligarchy's industrial financial groups

Chapter 3. State Capital, Millionaires and Managers, Small Business

3.1 The state sector and the natural monopolies

3.2 The state and the defense industry

3.3 The state sector: the Kremlin oligarchical group

3.4 Millionaires and managers

3.5 Small business and its prospects

3.6 The shadow economy, organized crime, and corruption

Chapter 4. How our economy works: Production and income distribution

4.1 The composition of national

income: the relationship of labor income to gross profit

4.2 Income distribution inequality, social stratification, and the middle class

4.3 The composition of GDP: personal consumption, investment, and government consumption

4.4 GDP dynamics

The crisis and stagnation of 1992-1998

A period of growth (after 1999)

Chapter 5. Economic policy

5.1 Structural reforms

5.2 Budget and tax policy

5.3 Credit and monetary policy

5.4 Economic policy as a whole

Chapter 6. Russia, the world, and the future

6.1 Russia in the global capitalist system

6.2 The inertial system of Russian capitalism

6.3 Possible alternatives and policy solutions

The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism

By Stanislav M. Menshikov

Translated from Russian by Rachel B. Douglas

EIR News Service - 2007

ISBN 978-0-943235-22-6

398 pages, soft cover, includes index

Cover price $30.00

Order from EIR News Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington DC, 20041-0390

1-800-278-3135

JRL readers who would like to order a copy at a discount may write for info on that to the author directly by e-mail at s.menchikov@chello.nl (copy to cmgusa@frontiernet.net).