Consumers of Privilege: A Political Analysis of Class, Consumption & Socialism

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Abstract
The totalitarian model of socialism is no longer universally accepted as an analytic framework in the study of societies that have followed the Soviet path of development. There is, however, no alternative model of authoritarian socialism that systematically links the political and economic aspects of state socialism in a comprehensive interpretive framework. This article, which explores the relationship between political power, central planning, and social inequality in the Soviet Union, seeks to fill this void. The author argues that centrally planned economies generate distinctive patterns of class hierarchy in the sphere of household and individual consumption and that inequalities in consumption are produced by the resulting bifurcation in the structure of consumption opportunities for the privileged and the masses. The article links this to the political logic of "marketless" socialism and, ultimately, to the rise of novel forms of class domination.

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