General conclusion

The key findings will be summed up here. The first chapter established that for Marx, the main characteristics of a social formation where the capitalist mode of production is dominant are wage labour (and therefore class private property), generalised commodity production, production of surplus-value, and competition of capitals (and the drive to accumulate capital). Throughout the book, and especially in the sixth chapter, it was demonstrated that, based on these characteristics, the Soviet economy was a capitalist economy in the Marxian sense.