KAPITALIZMO RAIDOSLIETUVOJE BRUOŽAI IR ETAPAI (IKI 1940 M.) POSTMARKSISTINIU POŽIŪRIU*
THE FEATURES AND STAGES OF THE CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT OF LITHUANIA (BEFORE1940) FROM THE POST-MARXIST VIEW POINT

Summary/Abstract: The paper critically surveys the historical research on the capitalist development of Lithuania in the Soviet time, inspired by the official Marxist–Leninist doctrine, and elaborates several suggestions how it could be fruitfully continued, using as sources of inspiration the economic sociological ideas of Max Weber, Joseph A. Schumpeter, neo-Marxian world-system analysis and Alexander Chayanov’s theory of peasant economy. The first section contains a brief outline of the classical Marxian idea of capitalism and its modification in the works by Vladimir Lenin which, jointly with the programmatic statements of the Communist party, were obligatory for historians working on the modern history of Lithuania in the Soviet time. So, according to the Marxist–Leninist historiography, Lithuania, after a short prelude of the free-competition capitalism after the abolition of serfdom in 1861, together with Russia entered the stage of the imperialistic monopolistic capitalism by the beginning of the 20th century. It was a state mo¬nopolist economy on a par with the most developed countries of the West, becoming ripe for the socialist revolution by 1940. The second section introduces the concept of the rational entrepreneurial capita¬lism (REC), grounded in the work of M. Weber and J.A. Schumpeter, and uses it for the critical reconstruc¬tion of the Marxian view of capitalist development, finding in the economic history of the capitalist world system core countries five evolutionary types of REC, corresponding to five Kondratieff’s waves (REC 1.0 – 5.0) since the industrial revolution in the late 18th century. While the Marxist–Leninist concept of state monopolist capitalism reflects some features of REC 3.0 and REC 4.0, its paradigmatic cases can be found in the semi-periphery of the capitalist world system, with the economic development of Russia in the 19th – early 20th century providing a most vivid illustration. Although the participation of Lithuania in the world capitalist system can be traced back to the 16th century, after the annexion of the Lithuania by the Russian empire in the late 18th century its economy became a double periphery inside the semi-peripheric empire displaying an internal differentiation into the core areas of intensive industrial capitalist develo¬pment (including lands of future Latvia and Estonia) and agrarian colonial periphery (including the bulk of contemporary Lithuania). The establishment of inde¬pendent Lithuania in 1918 transformed its economy into a direct periphery of the world capitalist system. While the land reform launched in 1922 reduced the numbers of wage workers, it abolished coercive labour control and, together with the construction of the food export industry, created conditions for the advancement of Lithuania from the peripheric into a semi-peripheric position in the capitalist world system, where it remains now.

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