Bolshevism and Stalinism (Urgeschichte): Revolution and CounterRevolution in the Era of Capital's Epochal Transition from Formal to Real Domination

Written at three moments (1979, 2000, 2008) over three decades, Bolshevism and Stalinism exhibits inner thematic unity:
Revolutionary transformations (1917-1920) in the West failed to bring viscerally anti-capitalist impulses and communal practices of the village community (Russia, Spain) together with desperate (skilled) worker opposition across Europe to capitalist rationalization during the first imperialist world war.
Unlike the agents of the bourgeois revolution (England, Netherlands) which politically stabilized capital’s formal domination, proletarians and revolutionaries (there was a class difference) did not pursue a total revolutionary resolution to the interwar, general crisis of capitalism; instead their practice, and concept of socialism which mediated it, aimed at a forced march into modernization (real domination).
Isolated from proletarian forces abroad and, from the outset of the Communist International, pursuing Soviet national interests, the Russian party leadership increasingly functioned as a surrogate bourgeoisie while maneuvering among imperialist powers. Long before a personal despot in the land of the October Revolution appeared atop the party-state, the liquidation of revolutionary gains had already begun.
A sequel to Class and Race in the American Civil War Era, Bolshevism and Stalinism may be read as a lengthy prologue to the author’s final major work, A Critique of the Civilization of Capital.