Spectral Liberalism: on the Subjects of Political Economy in Moscow

485 Pages·2016·3.773 MB·English

by  Adam Leeds

University of Pennsylvania
ScholarlyCommons
Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations
1-1-2016
Spectral Liberalism: on the Subjects of Political
Economy in Moscow
Adam Leeds
University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at:http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations
Part of theEastern European Studies Commons,European Languages and Societies Commons,
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Recommended Citation
Leeds, Adam, "Spectral Liberalism: on the Subjects of Political Economy in Moscow" (2016).Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations.
1828.
http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1828
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Spectral Liberalism: on the Subjects of Political Economy in Moscow
Abstract
The world since 1989 has appeared to many as the “end of history,” a uniform “neoliberalism” underpinned by
abstract economic theories. This dissertation, based on two years of fieldwork in among the economists of
Moscow (2010–2012), brings the tools of science studies to the social sciences, building on studies of the co-
constitution of objects and rationalities of rule to take seriously the local lives of mathematical economics as
culture. I offer an approach to the production of liberal political modernity through unpacking how economic
knowledge contributes to assembling the object it claims to study—“the economy.” In creating disciplinary
knowledge, economists craft specifically Russian visions of a liberal Russia to come. While the Russian right
has commanded sustained attention (and fear), the nature of Russian liberalism have been largely taken for
granted. I reconstruct the genealogies of mathematical economics to understand contemporary Russian
liberalism. I argue that, under Stalin, the Soviet Union ceased to have an economy, considered as a realm
separate from politics. In the 1950s, reformist economists constructed models of market-based socialisms,
resuscitating an economic hermeneutic of the Soviet polity. They joined forces with military cyberneticians,
producing a new form of knowledge: economic cybernetics. Economic cybernetics proved a strange “trading
zone” allowing mathematical economists to translate knowledges across the Iron Curtain. The culture of the
“scientific-technical intelligentsia” provided a medium for elaborating new ethical relationships to power. I
reveal the 1980s prehistory of the young economists who became the first Yeltsin government and dismantled
the Soviet economy. Their intellectual evolution originates not in Western “neoliberal” economics but rather
in Soviet reflections on market socialism. Reformist thinking within Soviet “economic cybernetics,” imagining
alternative socialisms, culminated in a critical vision of the political economy of the Soviet Union inflecting
contemporary Russian politics and culture. By studying the lived complexity of the liberal (and socialist)
visions that arose in Russia before and after 1989, this anthropological history of economic practice opens
new possibilities for imagining both present and future.
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Graduate Group
Anthropology
First Advisor
Adriana Petryna
Keywords
anthropology, economics, liberalism, Russia, science studies, Soviet Union
This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons:http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1828
Subject Categories
Eastern European Studies | European Languages and Societies | History | Slavic Languages and Societies |
Social and Cultural Anthropology
This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons:http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1828
SPECTRAL LIBERALISM:
ON THE SUBJECTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN MOSCOW
ADAM E. LEEDS
A DISSERTATION
in
Anthropology
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
2016
Supervisor of Dissertation

_______________________
Adriana Petryna
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in Anthropology

Graduate Group Chairperson

_______________________
Deborah A. Thomas
Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies

Dissertation Committee

John Tresch Philippe Bourgois
Associate Professor of History Richard Perry University Professor of
and Philosophy of Science Anthropology and Family and
Community Medecine
Stephen Collier
Associate Professor of International Affairs
SPECTRAL LIBERALISM:
ON THE SUBJECTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN MOSCOW
COPYRIGHT
2016
Adam E. Leeds

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
License

To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/
iii

This work is dedicated to my mother and father,
Marty-Ann and Myles,
whose love for me exceeds all reason.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The debts incurred in writing this dissertation are too many for weak memory. My
thought has been guided for years by the teaching of undergraduate mentors, Michael
Silverstein and John A. Lucy. Perhaps as important have been my years of conversations
with Max Gasner and Matt Giles. During graduate school my advisors each shaped my
thinking deeply in their own ways—Adriana Petryna, Stephen Collier, Serguei
Oushakine, Philippe Bourgois, and John Tresch. The members of my “shadow
committee,” as I like to call them, made equal contributions—Kevin M.F. Platt,
Benjamin Nathans, and Asif Agha.
Fieldwork incurs far more debts, impossible to discharge. But I want to thank
Sergei Guriev and all of the professoriate and staff of the New Economic School, who
welcomed me and helped me beyond measure, Yurii Gavrilets of CEMI and Emil Ershov
of HES (svetlaia pamiat’) who gifted me their memories of a vanishing world, and
Viacheslav Shironin, who vouched for me to his friends and shared generously of his
own memories and ruminations. Ilya Budraitskis and Alexei Penzin offered me
intellectual companionship and friendship. Sonja Trauss gave me that and more.
The writing of this dissertation depended on the friendship and inspiration of
Cassandra Hartblay, Laura Finch, Jason Oakes, Katy Hardy, and above all Thea
Riofrancos, my best friend in every sense, without whom this dissertation simply would
never have happened.
v
ABSTRACT

SPECTRAL LIBERALISM:
ON THE SUBJECTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN MOSCOW
Adam E. Leeds
Adriana Petryna
The world since 1989 has appeared to many as the “end of history,” a uniform
“neoliberalism” underpinned by abstract economic theories. This dissertation, based on
two years of fieldwork in among the economists of Moscow (2010–2012), brings the
tools of science studies to the social sciences, building on studies of the co-constitution of
objects and rationalities of rule to take seriously the local lives of mathematical
economics as culture. I offer an approach to the production of liberal political modernity
through unpacking how economic knowledge contributes to assembling the object it
claims to study—“the economy.” In creating disciplinary knowledge, economists craft
specifically Russian visions of a liberal Russia to come. While the Russian right has
commanded sustained attention (and fear), the nature of Russian liberalism have been
largely taken for granted. I reconstruct the genealogies of mathematical economics to
understand contemporary Russian liberalism. I argue that, under Stalin, the Soviet Union
ceased to have an economy, considered as a realm separate from politics. In the 1950s,
reformist economists constructed models of market-based socialisms, resuscitating an
economic hermeneutic of the Soviet polity. They joined forces with military
cyberneticians, producing a new form of knowledge: economic cybernetics. Economic
cybernetics proved a strange “trading zone” allowing mathematical economists to
vi
translate knowledges across the Iron Curtain. The culture of the “scientific-technical
intelligentsia” provided a medium for elaborating new ethical relationships to power. I
reveal the 1980s prehistory of the young economists who became the first Yeltsin
government and dismantled the Soviet economy. Their intellectual evolution originates
not in Western “neoliberal” economics but rather in Soviet reflections on market
socialism. Reformist thinking within Soviet “economic cybernetics,” imagining
alternative socialisms, culminated in a critical vision of the political economy of the
Soviet Union inflecting contemporary Russian politics and culture. By studying the lived
complexity of the liberal (and socialist) visions that arose in Russia before and after 1989,
this anthropological history of economic practice opens new possibilities for imagining
both present and future.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IV
ABSTRACT V
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XI
INTRODUCTION: SPECTRAL LIBERALISMS 1
TO HIT A DUCK 1
THE END OF HISTORY AND POST-SOVIET ABJECTION 11
THE ECONOMY AND POLITICAL MODERNITY 19
FROM THE ECONOMIC TO THE ECONOMY 23
THE MALIGN NEGLECT OF ECONOMICS 28
THE SURVIVAL STATE 35
FOR AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF ECONOMICS 43
THE SOVIET UNION AND THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL MARGIN 47
SPECTRAL LIBERALISM 51
ECONOMIC REASON AND SOCIALIST GOVERNMENTALITIES 58
MARCHING ON THE WHITE HOUSE 66
LOGOMACHIA AND LEVIATHAN: WHAT IS TO BE DONE AFTER THE
REVOLUTION 72
POWER TO THE PEOPLE 72
INTRODUCTION: THE POST-REVOLUTIONARY PROBLEMATIC 81
FIGURES OF THE UNIVERSAL 85
AN IMPOSSIBLE SCIENCE 89
WHAT IS A PLAN? 95
BOLSHEVIK “MACRO”: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INDUSTRIALIZATION 98
FROM GOELRO TO GOSPLAN: THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE PLAN 102
THE SCIENCE OF THE KONJUNKTUR 107
TO THE FIRST FIVE YEAR PLAN 111
THE ÉTATICIZATION DYNAMIC, 1928-1939 115
THE END OF THE ECONOMIC AND THE END OF THE ECONOMISTS 118
ASSEMBLING THE ECONOMIC MECHANISM: SOVIET ECONOMICS 1937–
1965 AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT 124
INTRODUCTION 124
1. CONTRADICTIONS OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOCIALISM: THE “LAW OF VALUE”
UNDER SOCIALIST CONDITIONS AND THE UNWRITABLE TEXTBOOK 136
2. THE TIME FACTOR: ENGINEERS’ INVESTIGATIONS OF CAPITAL INVESTMENT 147