The Hard-Earned Integration of the East in the World Economic System

Abstract

World socialism was a subsystem of the world-system and as such could not run deeper than the system of which it was a part. Had Lenin realized the workings of the world economic system, he would have concluded that Russia had no chance whatsoever to build an antisystemic economy in the midst of an overpowering world capitalist system. In his earlier writings, Lenin had a glimpse of that reality, hoping that another socialist revolution would break out in Germany, bailing out the Russian one. Instead, as his dream failed to materialize he began a desperate enter-prise: socialism in one country.