Philipp Lenhard

The second volume of the collected writings of Friedrich Pollock centers around his habilitation thesis on the Soviet planned economy. Inspired by a several-week research trip to Moscow during the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, Pollock presented the first comprehensive German-language study of the early Soviet economic system with his work. He was particularly concerned with the question of whether a socialist planned economy is practically feasible—a topic that would accompany him until the last years of his life. The issue of planned economy is closely linked to Pollock's crisis-theoretical considerations, which occupied him—following his earlier works on the critique of political economy—during the global economic crisis. Pollock predicted early on that there would not be a collapse, but rather a long-term consolidation of capitalism, which would be associated with the introduction of planned economic elements and a significant strengthening of the state as an economic actor. With the early essays published here from the Journal for Social Research, Pollock laid the groundwork for the later state capitalism thesis formulated in the early 1940s. In addition to the extensive work on the planned economic attempts in the Soviet Union and the early essays from the institute's journal, the second volume of the collected writings also includes reviews from various journals as well as previously unpublished crisis-theoretical notes from his estate.