Bakalov asks how the war against Ukraine is transforming the state-society complex in Russia. The analysis posits that the war has its roots in the contradictions of neoliberal transformation of Russian society. In particular, it draws attention to the organic crisis of the ruling bloc and emphasises three important dimensions: crisis of capital accumulation, crisis of labour reproduction, and crisis of legitimacy. Unable to reproduce the power configuration by eliciting the consent of subordinate groups, the ruling bloc resorts to violence in an attempt to resolve the organic crisis. Violence and the corresponding destruction are fostering productive forces that had previously remained dormant and are thereby becoming a driver of economic and societal development. Rather than treating violence as an exogeneous shock to capitalist development, Bakalov advances a historical materialist framework that integrates violence in the study of capitalist political economy and outline three dimensions of an integral logic of transformation: (1) violence as enterprise; (2) violence as labour; and (3) violence as ideology. The talk focuses on the labour dimension as a case study of the contradictions emerging in a growth model driven by violence. Bakalov argues that violence can sustain economic growth for a considerable period of time, but it cannot resolve the organic crisis plaguing the Russian ruling bloc because violence can only expand but not develop the productive forces of society. As such violence cannot overcome the disjuncture between the relations of production and the productive forces in society.
Ivan Bakalov is a researcher and lecturer in International Relations and International Political Economy with a focus on societal transformations in Eastern Europe.