The Architecture of the Plan

Keywords: Plan; Anticenter; anticapital; anticapitalist reproduction; Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat; RDP; Command Core; nomenklatura; Contour A; Contour B; non-arbitrageability; catching-up development; self-sponsorship; real socialism; anti-market; imperialism; polar periphery; Marxism; Polar Marxism

JEL Codes: B51; P16; P21; P26; P27; P51; H11; F54

Introduction

Modern political economy, both Marxist and Western, ultimately cannot adequately describe socialism, non-Western forms more generally, whether they are called socialism or not, or the modern world as a whole. It can grasp only something like the surface essence of what appears in reality, including what is not capitalism in the form in which capitalism is ordinarily understood. It places emphasis on visible features, on the presence or absence of certain traits, and then uses these checklists to determine whether a system is one thing or another. But every time, this method produces mistakes.

In other words, these approaches try to define a system on the basis of features, but those features are constantly changing. Because of this, they still cannot understand what they are looking at. They remain at the level of surface description. Most importantly, this happens because they do not try to understand the law behind these systems.

This work begins differently. It starts by trying to define non-Western formations as such: as formations that have their own internal logic and their own basis. It begins from the assumption that they have their own mode of production, which in this work will be called the anticapitalist mode of production, or, in short, anticapital.

Thus, real socialism, meaning the socialism that actually appeared in history, for example the Soviet Union or China, is precisely what this work calls the Anticenter of anticapital: the global anticapitalist mode of production. The task of this work is to analyze its essence.

The work attempts to bring out the anticapitalist mode of production, anticapital, its Anticenter, and its logic on the basis of the laws and regularities that appear in this system. The key question here is the question of the Plan. More precisely, the question is the Plan as that which is analogous to the market in capitalism: that is, what the market is for capitalism and the West.

This requires moving away from a vulgar understanding of the Plan. The Plan is not simply a document, a technical allocation table, or a bureaucratic instrument. The Plan is a structure within anticapital, or the structure of anticapital itself, that is capable of command, direction, execution, reproduction, and development.

Just as capital must be brought out through its laws of motion, which we call the law of capital, anticapital must be brought out in the same way: through its law of motion, which in this work will be called the law of anticapital.

The work is theoretical.

In the course of the work, I will show that the Soviet Union and China are the same thing at the level of their general form: the so-called Anticenter. They are different versions of this Anticenter within the anticapitalist formation.

The remainder of this work is structured as follows. The next section reconstructs the geopolitical foundations of the Anticenter by analyzing the relation between the Center, the periphery, and the Anticenter. The following section analyzes the material form of proletarian power and non-arbitrageable command. The next sections analyze the representative class of the Anticenter, including nomenklatura, unified command, and monopolistic representation. The later sections develop the mechanisms of self-sponsorship and catching-up development, outline the functional division of the Anticenter, and derive the reproductive laws that follow from this architecture. The work then clarifies several common historical and theoretical misreadings of anticapital before concluding.

Center, Periphery, and Anticenter

Within this work and this theoretical model, by the so-called Center we mean imperialism, more precisely the world center of capital in relation to the periphery. It concentrates capital, finance, technology, military force, global command, and the main mechanisms of appropriation.

Definition 1 (Center). The Center is imperialism considered as the world center of capital in relation to the periphery. It concentrates capital, finance, technology, military force, global command, and the main mechanisms of appropriation.

The periphery, in turn, is the zone that is formed and maintained by the Center in its pursuit of profit realization, because of the law of realization. It exists under external command. Its resources, labour, markets, infrastructure, and political forms are drawn into the movement of the Center.

Since this work is dialectical-materialist, one clarification is necessary. By the periphery, we mean what the periphery would be if capitalism were pure. For the sake of abstraction, we can think here of capitalism before 1914, before the appearance of the Soviet Union. This is the periphery being referred to here, because later this periphery is transformed into something else. It remains the periphery, but it changes certain properties, and this transformation is precisely one of the objects studied by this work.

Definition 2 (Periphery). The periphery is the subordinated part of the world whose resources, labour, markets, infrastructure, and political forms are drawn into the movement of the Center.

The pressure of the Center places the periphery in a contradictory position. Capital uses the periphery as an external condition of its own reproduction. It draws value, resources, labour, and markets from it, but this same movement blocks the periphery from forming a stable capitalist path of development. The periphery is included in capitalism, but it is included as a subordinated zone.

As shown in earlier works, this is connected with the second breath of imperialism.¹ The Center preserves itself by pushing its contradictions outward. The periphery absorbs these contradictions. Its internal reproduction becomes unstable. Its capitalist form remains present, but it cannot fully organize development.

This pressure produces a break in the reproduction of the periphery. The capitalist form remains present, but it no longer gives the periphery a stable path of development. The periphery begins to seek its own form of organization because the imposed form cannot reproduce it as a developed society. Other aspects concerning the formation of the anticapitalist formation will be examined in another work.

Further, in the course of the world’s movement, we enter the polar epoch. This is the moment when the contradictions of the Center are exposed on the periphery, and the periphery becomes the polar periphery: the periphery of the polar epoch. From this moment on, the world becomes polar, meaning that it consists of two parts: binary or bipolar, which I will call simply polar.

The polar periphery is the historical-geographical zone where the pressure of the Center breaks the reproductive force of capital and pushes the periphery toward another form of organization.

The hidden mode of production that had been forming on the periphery under the pressure of imperialism is called, for now, potential anticapital.

Potential anticapital is the condition of the periphery when capitalist relations lose the capacity to reproduce development and the periphery begins to seek another form of organization. It is a scattered movement toward sovereignty, development, and liberation from the command of the Center. This movement has a historical meaning, even if its foundations are not yet fully clear. It represents that nourishing force, that law which exists in the world besides the law of profit. More precisely, besides profit as a motivation, or as a mode of human existence and tendency, there is something else as well: something that pushes toward organizing the world around other principles of life and organization. It is this force and this tendency that I call potential anticapital.

Definition 3 (Polar Periphery). The polar periphery is the periphery in the polar epoch. It is the historical-geographical zone where the pressure of the Center breaks the reproductive force of capital and pushes the periphery toward another form of organization.

Definition 4 (Potential Anticapital). Potential anticapital is the internal condition of the polar periphery in which capitalist relations lose the capacity to reproduce development and the periphery begins to seek another form of organization.

This historical movement requires concentration. A dispersed periphery remains exposed to external command. Each separate country can be pressured, isolated, disciplined, or absorbed back into the movement of the Center. The periphery needs a pole of organization, protection, command, and development.

This pole is the Anticenter.

The Anticenter is the pole of concentration of the polar periphery. It gathers scattered attempts at sovereignty, development, and protection into one historical direction. Through it, the periphery ceases to exist only as separate exposed units and begins to exist as a field organized against the Center.

It is very important to note that the tendency toward independent development and the tendency against the Center are expressed through one and the same thing. This is how the process developed historically, and this is what logically follows from the material structure of reality itself.

For this reason, these tendencies are called anticapital: because they move against the Western, that is, against capital and against its Center. Therefore the center that moves against this Center is called the Anticenter.

The Anticenter gives potential anticapital a stable form. Before this form, potential anticapital exists as pressure, failed capitalist reproduction, revolt, and the search for another organization. After this form appears, the movement receives a durable structure of power, production, and development.

Definition 5 (Anticenter). The Anticenter is the pole of concentration of the polar periphery. It gives potential anticapital a stable historical form and organizes the movement of the periphery against the Center.

This is the point at which potential anticapital becomes anticapital.

Anticapital is potential anticapital organized through a stable historical form. It is a structure that holds resources, directs labour, protects development, and reproduces itself against the pressure of the Center.

Definition 6 (Anticapital). Anticapital is potential anticapital organized through a stable historical form. It is a structure that holds resources, directs labour, protects development, and reproduces itself against the pressure of the Center.

The historical name of this organized form is socialism. More exactly, it is real socialism. In the terminology of this work, its precise name is the Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat, or RDP, when it is considered at the level of the world structure.

Also, within my theory, the order of anticapital and its center as a whole are called Ordo Perversus in relation to capital and its center, the so-called Ordo Corruptus.

The Soviet Union was the Anticenter of the previous historical period. China is the Anticenter of the present historical period. The future Anticenter must become the RDP of the third type, or Cenes.

It is very important to note that when I say Anticenter, this does not imply some local point. The Anticenter is precisely a geographical configuration, not a specific place. The Anticenter itself can even be large, for example, or occupy a substantial part of a territory, if not the entire territory. This depends on the historical context.

Proletarian Power and Non-Arbitrageable Command

The Anticenter is the organized form of anticapital. Anticapital is the power of the proletariat in the polar periphery. This power has a material form: command over the structure that directs the economy.

In earlier work, this directing structure was called Contour A.² Contour A is the commanding contour of the economy. It includes the decisive nodes through which credit, land, resources, energy, infrastructure, transport, strategic industry, external economic movement, knowledge, technology, and so on are directed.

Class power can be represented by the vector (V=(B,P)), where (B) denotes bourgeois power and (P) denotes proletarian power. The value 0 denotes the absence of realized internal class power. The value 1 denotes relative sovereign class power. The value 2 denotes absolute sovereign class power.

The Anticenter corresponds to absolute proletarian sovereignty. In the notation of class power, this is (V=(0,2)): bourgeois power is absent from the commanding structure, and proletarian power is absolute.

The capture of Contour A is the material form of this power. When Contour A passes into the collective state form of the proletariat, proletarian power becomes economic power in the base. This is the material meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat in this work.

The proletariat holds this power as an aggregate class. Its power is expressed through the Anticenter, which concentrates the will of the polar periphery and turns it into command over development.

The historical Anticenters, the Soviet Union and China, differ in their concrete forms. Their common point is the same: Contour A is removed from bourgeois command and placed under the organized power of the RDP.

The distinction between (V=(0,1)) and (V=(0,2)) is decisive here. The state (V=(0,1)) denotes relative proletarian sovereignty. In this case, proletarian power exists, but Contour A itself may be owned, so to speak, either partially or fully. This does not matter, because the system as a whole is relatively sovereign in relation to the Anticenter. The state (V=(0,2)) denotes absolute proletarian sovereignty. In this case, Contour A is held only as a whole by the Anticenter.

Under (V=(0,1)), part of Contour A may remain arbitrageable. This means that some resources, financial channels, infrastructure, land, or strategic assets can still be used by the imperialist bourgeoisie, by the national bourgeoisie, or by the Anticenter itself. This does not have the same meaning as a breach inside the Anticenter, because the partially arbitrageable zone remains inside a wider field of anticapitalist influence. The Anticenter itself can also arbitrage, control, or redirect the arbitrageable part of Contour A in a peripheral country.

Definition 7 (Imperialist Bourgeoisie). The imperialist bourgeoisie is the bourgeoisie of the Center, that is, the class form of world capital.

Definition 8 (National Bourgeoisie). The national bourgeoisie is the bourgeoisie inside a dependent or peripheral country. In an anticapitalist field, it exists in a subordinated position and appears only as a present class during a definite historical period, for example during the anti-market period.

By arbitrageability, we mean primarily bourgeois arbitrageability: the ability of the bourgeoisie to use a part of Contour A for schemes, enrichment, money-making, private accumulation, and the subordination of that part of the system to profit or to the law of profit.

As stated above, under relative proletarian sovereignty this can be tolerated. Under absolute proletarian sovereignty, the same openness becomes fatal. The Anticenter is the holder of the whole commanding contour. It cannot allow even the slightest part of Contour A to break away, because the entire periphery depends on this Center. In other words, Contour A must be monolithic.

This is the principle of non-arbitrageability. Contour A of the Anticenter must remain closed to bourgeois arbitrage and to independent channels of command. No decisive node may become a separate path through which capital can transform access to resources into power.

A breach in Contour A is a point where the law of capital enters the commanding structure. Once a decisive node becomes arbitrageable, value begins to flow through it, and power begins to follow value. A rupture of this kind along the chain would destroy the system itself, which we will prove is impossible and which, in the end, is a law.

If non-arbitrageability is broken inside the Anticenter, the system begins to disintegrate through the breach. Value flows into the arbitrageable node. Command follows value. Other nodes begin to imitate the breach. The commanding contour then breaks into separate channels.

The Jack Ma and Ant Group case can be read as an example of this logic. It is not the full object of the analysis, but a clear example of what a breach in Contour A inside the Anticenter could look like. An autonomous private financial platform at the scale of national credit would create a partial alternative financial power; loss of command over such a financial node would mean loss of command over allocation, investment, credit, and future development.³⁴⁵⁶

Law 1 (Non-Arbitrageable Command). Absolute proletarian sovereignty implies full command over Contour A and the non-arbitrageability of Contour A.

If an economic system has the class-power vector (V=(0,2)), or, in other words, if such an economic system is an Anticenter, then Contour A is fully captured by the government and closed to bourgeois arbitrage.

Equivalently, when we speak of the power of the Anticenter, the power of the proletariat, or the power of anticapital in the strict sense, we mean a system in which the commanding contour is fully held and cannot become a channel of bourgeois schemes, private accumulation, or independent capitalist command.

The converse does not follow. A non-arbitrageable Contour A by itself does not prove that a system is the Anticenter, nor does it prove that the system has absolute proletarian sovereignty. The law moves in one direction: if (V=(0,2)), then Contour A must be fully captured and non-arbitrageable. The mere appearance of non-arbitrageability does not by itself establish (V=(0,2)).

The Representative Class of the Anticenter

To analyze the Anticenter, it is necessary to introduce the category of the representative class. A representative class is the class through which a basic economic class expresses its power as administration, command, and direction.

Definition 9 (Representative Class). A representative class is the class through which a basic economic class expresses its power as administration, command, and direction.

In the analysis of capital, this category can remain secondary for a long time, because capital already appears directly through ownership, profit, competition, accumulation, and the movement of firms. In the analysis of the Anticenter, the representative class becomes vital, because proletarian power appears as collective command over the whole economic structure.

In capitalism, the representative function is divided into two main forms. Managers organize the economy inside firms and sectors. Politicians organize the state, law, coercion, and the institutional frame of reproduction.

Managers and politicians are separated because capital itself is separated into many owners, firms, branches, and competing units. Economic command and political command therefore appear as different functions, even though both reproduce the movement of capital.

In the Anticenter, this separation is overcome by the structure of the system itself. Contour A is held as a unified commanding contour. The state and the economy are joined through the same structure of command.

The representative class of the Anticenter therefore combines the economic and political functions in one class. This class manages production, allocation, resources, infrastructure, and development. At the same time, it holds state power, law, coercion, ideology, and political command.

This unified political-managerial representative class is the nomenklatura.

The aggregate proletariat is the owning class of the Anticenter. Nomenklatura is the representative class through which this ownership becomes command, administration, and economic direction.

The political function of nomenklatura is already economic, because political power gives command over Contour A. The economic function of nomenklatura is already political, because management of Contour A determines the survival, stability, and direction of the Anticenter.

This unity gives the Anticenter its internal form. The power of the proletariat exists as command over Contour A, and this command is carried by nomenklatura as the unified class of political-economic representation.

Definition 10 (Nomenklatura). Nomenklatura is the unified political-managerial representative class of the Anticenter. It combines the economic function of management and the political function of state command in one class.

Law 2 (Unified Representation). If an economic system has the class-power vector (V=(0,2)), then its representative class must take the form of a unified political-managerial class, that is, nomenklatura.

Absolute proletarian sovereignty implies full command over Contour A. Full command over Contour A implies unified political and economic representation. Therefore, the RDP implies nomenklatura as the unified representative class of the Anticenter, together with its basic properties, characteristics, and internal logic.

Monopolistic Representation

The unity of nomenklatura also implies its monopoly.

In capitalism, representative functions are dispersed. Many managers represent many capitals, and many politicians represent competing political forms of capital. This plurality corresponds to the fragmented structure of capital itself.

In the Anticenter, the commanding structure is monopolistic. Therefore, representation must also be monopolistic. The managerial function cannot be dispersed into independent economic commands, and the political function cannot be dispersed into competing political commands.

Law 3 (Monopolistic Representation). If an economic system has the class-power vector (V=(0,2)), then its representative class must exist as a single, exclusive monopoly of political-managerial command.

Absolute proletarian sovereignty implies an indivisible Contour A. An indivisible Contour A excludes competitive representation and institutional pluralism. Therefore, the RDP implies the absolute monopoly of nomenklatura over both political and economic functions, as any fragmentation of this monopoly leads directly to the dissolution of the Anticenter and, consequently, to the collapse of anticapital as a historical formation, rendering its reproduction impossible.

Self-Sponsorship

What do we know about nomenklatura?

Nomenklatura is a representative class without private capital as its material sponsor. This is the decisive difference between nomenklatura and the representative classes of capital.

In capitalism, managers and politicians are materially connected to capital. Managers receive their position, salary, and status through the firm and its success. Politicians receive support through the institutional and financial channels of the capitalist order.

Nomenklatura cannot be reproduced in this way. If capital becomes the material sponsor of nomenklatura, nomenklatura loses its unified and monopolistic form and falls back into the divided world of managers and politicians.

For each separate member of nomenklatura, dependence on capital opens the path to individual competition after the dissolution of the class. In that situation, the former member of nomenklatura must survive as an isolated manager or politician inside the capitalist field. This is structurally disadvantageous, because the unified class form that protected and empowered this member has disappeared.

Nomenklatura is therefore anticapitalist by its own position. It must hold capital below itself. It must prevent capital from becoming the source of its material reproduction. It must preserve the non-arbitrageable command of Contour A.

This creates a double problem of reproduction. Nomenklatura must reproduce the material basis of its existence, and it must reproduce its political power. These two tasks are connected, because the loss of material command weakens political power, and the loss of political power opens Contour A to capital.

The Anticenter exists inside a capitalist world environment. Capital therefore constantly presses against it from outside and from inside. This pressure can appear through bribery, financial penetration, ideological destabilization, protest technologies, colour-revolution mechanisms, sanctions, military pressure, and direct or indirect attempts to break the sovereign power of the proletariat, the systemic force of anticapital, and the rule of nomenklatura as their political-managerial representative.

Nomenklatura must therefore maintain its power from two sides. First, it must prevent capital from becoming its sponsor. Second, it must create the material and organizational strength needed to resist capitalist penetration and political destruction.

This mechanism is self-sponsorship. Self-sponsorship does not mean that nomenklatura becomes an owning class. It means that nomenklatura reproduces its own rule by managing the economy whose commanding contour it represents.

Nomenklatura sustains itself by organizing production, transforming the economy, increasing productive capacity, and expanding the material power of the Anticenter.

Political survival therefore becomes economic management. Nomenklatura holds power only by producing the material conditions that allow this power to continue.

Definition 11 (Self-Sponsorship). Self-sponsorship is the mechanism through which nomenklatura reproduces its own rule by managing the economy whose commanding contour it represents.

Law 4 (Anticapitalist Self-Preservation). Nomenklatura cannot place itself under the material sponsorship of capital.

If nomenklatura becomes materially dependent on capital, it loses the unified and monopolistic form that makes it nomenklatura. It dissolves into the capitalist field as separate managers and politicians.

Therefore, nomenklatura is anticapitalist by the law of its own self-preservation. It must keep capital below itself, block capital from becoming the source of its reproduction, and preserve the non-arbitrageable command of Contour A.

This law also confirms the class meaning of nomenklatura. Since nomenklatura is the representative class of the proletariat, its proletarian character already implies an anticapitalist character.

The law of anticapitalist self-preservation proves the same point from another side. Nomenklatura cannot become the representative of capital without dissolving its own unified and monopolistic form.

Nomenklatura is therefore not only non-capitalist. It is anticapitalist in its own structure. Its self-preservation requires the subordination of capital, the protection of Contour A, and resistance to capitalist sponsorship.

It should also be noted that, in the end, we see that the words “non-capitalist,” “anticapitalist” without a hyphen, and “proletarian” correspond to one and the same thing. Thus, through nomenklatura, we can see that the power of the proletariat is simultaneously the power of anticapital, and the same force that is not capital, that is, non-capital. And this is what this work calls simply anticapital.

Catching-Up Development

Thus, we have understood that the nomenklatura needs self-sponsorship. What, then, does this so-called self-sponsorship represent more precisely?

Self-sponsorship appears as a tendency toward development, and in development itself. Nomenklatura preserves its power by increasing the productive, organizational, technological, infrastructural, and defensive capacity of the system.

Nomenklatura is therefore interested in development by its own position. Development supports its power, strengthens the Anticenter, protects Contour A, and blocks the pressure of capital.

This interest becomes a drive toward the maximization of development. In a capitalist world environment, weak development leaves the Anticenter exposed to imperialist pressure. Strong development increases its ability to resist, absorb pressure, and preserve its own structure. That is, the point is that we are not simply talking about development. Development by itself, without a goal, random development, cannot be a goal as such. We cannot say that the nomenklatura, by its nature, simply develops things however they happen to develop. No. We have to say and affirm that, logically and historically, development leads precisely to the maximization of available development.

Since the Anticenter arises on the polar periphery, this development has a specific historical form. It is development against backwardness, dependency, external command, and peripheral degradation.

The maximization of development therefore becomes the maximization of catching-up development.

Law 5 (Catching-Up Development). The Anticenter maximizes catching-up development.

This law follows from the structure of the RDP. Nomenklatura must preserve itself as the unified and monopolistic representative class of the aggregate proletariat. It cannot rely on capital as its sponsor. It also exists under constant imperialist pressure. It must therefore self-sponsor through the expansion of the material power of the Anticenter.

Since the Anticenter arises on the polar periphery, this expansion takes the form of catching-up development. Therefore, the law of motion of the Anticenter is the maximization of catching-up development.

The law of catching-up development is also called the law of anticapital within this work. This is the law referred to earlier. We will use this designation because the maximization of catching-up development expresses the historical logic of anticapital as a mode of existence separate from capitalism.

Definition 12 (Law of Anticapital). The law of anticapital is the law of catching-up development: the law by which the Anticenter maximizes catching-up development through the expansion of its material power.

The Functional Division of the Anticenter

The Anticenter has three functional parts: command, direction, and execution.

Command is the Command Core. The Command Core is the aggregate nomenklatura and its party form. It includes the political-managerial apparatus through which the Anticenter formulates its command and holds general control over the system.

Direction is Contour A. Contour A is the commanding contour through which the command of the Command Core becomes the material direction of the economy.

Execution is Contour B. Contour B is the productive-executive contour through which the direction set by Contour A becomes production, organization, adaptation, and concrete economic movement.

These three parts form one architecture. The Command Core commands. Contour A directs. Contour B executes.

Definition 13 (Command Core). The Command Core is the aggregate nomenklatura and its party form. It is the part of command inside the Anticenter.

Definition 14 (Functional Division of the Anticenter). The functional division of the Anticenter is the division of the Anticenter into command, direction, and execution.

The three parts have a lever-like form. The Command Core stands closest to the point of command. Contour A stands near it as the material part of direction. Contour B forms the long arm of the system.

The Command Core is the most invariant part. Its concrete personnel, internal balance, and tactical methods may change, but its general function and form remain the same.

Contour A is also highly invariant. Its concrete methods and institutional forms may change, but its essence remains the same: it holds the commanding nodes of the economy and turns command into direction.

Contour B is a highly variable part. It can change its organizational form, technical methods, mode of execution, and so forth. This is where the system adapts to the complexity of the economy and to the historical level of technology.

The lever image shows the scale of transformation. A small change in the Command Core or in the configuration of Contour A can produce a large transformation in Contour B. The closer a part stands to command, the more invariant it is; the farther it stands in execution, the more variable it becomes.

This creates a possible error of perception. The Anticenter may appear to have changed completely because Contour B has changed strongly. But if the Command Core and Contour A remain intact, the structure itself has not changed. What has changed is the variable part of execution, often as a result of smaller changes in command and direction.

The Laws of Anticentral Reproduction

The functional division of the Anticenter gives rise to a series of laws. These laws describe how command, direction, and execution reproduce the Anticenter as a system.

Law 6 (Hermeticity). Under the condition (V=(0,2)), the hermetic form of Contour A and the law of catching-up development imply each other.

If an economic system has absolute proletarian sovereignty, then a hermetic and non-arbitrageable Contour A implies the law of catching-up development, because the commanding contour is held by the Anticenter as the instrument of expanding its material power.

Conversely, under the same condition (V=(0,2)), the law of catching-up development implies a hermetic and non-arbitrageable Contour A, because catching-up development requires the commanding contour to remain closed to bourgeois arbitrage and directed as one structure.

Therefore, within absolute proletarian sovereignty, hermetic Contour A and catching-up development form one relation: Contour A is the closed material form of command, and catching-up development is the movement of that command.

Law 7 (Command). Within the Anticenter, the monopoly of Contour A implies the political power of the Command Core, and the political power of the Command Core implies the monopoly of Contour A.

If the system has the class-power vector (V=(0,2)), then Contour A is held as a hermetic and non-arbitrageable commanding structure. This structure requires a unified political-managerial holder. This holder is the Command Core.

The Command Core holds political power through its command over Contour A. Contour A remains hermetic through the political power of the Command Core. Therefore, within the Anticenter, political power and the monopoly of Contour A form one relation.

Law 8 (Reproduction). The Anticenter reproduces its power only while it can develop.

Nomenklatura survives through self-sponsorship. Self-sponsorship requires the expansion of the material power of the Anticenter. This expansion appears as development.

While development continues, nomenklatura can reproduce its material basis, preserve its political power, and hold Contour A. When development stops, the material basis of self-sponsorship weakens. Nomenklatura then becomes exposed to capital, and the RDP becomes vulnerable to disintegration in its existing form.

The Soviet Union can be read as an example of this law. Its collapse followed the exhaustion of the developmental capacity of its concrete form of RDP, that is, Anticenter. When development stopped reproducing the power of nomenklatura, the existing structure lost the basis of its survival.

Law 9 (Legitimation). The Command Core and Contour A preserve their power through the development produced in Contour B.

The Command Core commands. Contour A directs. Contour B executes. Therefore, the actual production of development occurs in Contour B.

Nomenklatura holds power by directing Contour A toward the maximization of development, but this development becomes real only through Contour B. If Contour B produces growth, the system reproduces the power of nomenklatura, preserves the hermetic form of Contour A, and sustains the Anticenter.

The legitimacy of Command Core and Contour A therefore depends on the capacity of Contour B to generate development.

Law 10 (Fixation). Nomenklatura becomes fixed to the concrete form of Contour B through which it reproduces its power.

Contour B is the variable part of the Anticenter, but it is also the part where development is actually produced. Since nomenklatura survives through development, it becomes attached to the form of Contour B that makes development possible in a given historical period.

In the Soviet case, nomenklatura became fixed to the gross form of Contour B. In the Chinese case, nomenklatura became fixed to the anti-market form of Contour B. In each case, the concrete form of Contour B becomes the practical world through which nomenklatura thinks, manages, and survives.

Misreadings of Anticapital

The laws derived above also clarify several common misreadings of anticapital. These misreadings arise when one part of the system is taken for the whole system, when command is confused with ownership, or when Contour B is mistaken for Contour A.

The first misreading concerns the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the terms of this work, the Soviet Union collapsed as an Anticenter, but not as anticapital. Its concrete form of RDP lost the developmental capacity through which nomenklatura reproduced itself. When development approached zero, self-sponsorship weakened, Contour B ceased to reproduce the Command Core, and the existing form of (V=(0,2)) disintegrated, following the Laws of Reproduction, Legitimation, and Fixation. The question of why Soviet development approached zero belongs to a separate analysis. The literature on Soviet economic decline and growth slowdown provides the empirical background for this claim.⁷⁸ The point here is narrower: the collapse followed the law of reproduction. A concrete Anticenter cannot survive after the exhaustion of the developmental form through which it reproduces its power.

The Russian Federation therefore cannot be read as a simple passage into ordinary imperialist capitalism. The Soviet Union collapsed as the Anticenter of its historical period, but the wider anticapitalist field did not disappear. Russia retained a large state sector, strategic state capacity, and partial command over decisive nodes.⁹¹⁰ In the terms of this work, it is (V=(0,1)). It is no longer the Anticenter, but it remains inside the field of anticapital.

The second misreading concerns nomenklatura. Many interpretations see the enormous power of nomenklatura and then identify this power with ownership. This is a category error. The power of nomenklatura is real, but it has already been defined as representative power. Nomenklatura commands, manages, allocates, disciplines, and directs. These functions belong to the Command Core. They do not by themselves constitute a private title of ownership.

The error consists in replacing ownership with command. Nomenklatura holds command through the representative structure of the Anticenter. The owning class remains the aggregate proletariat. The representative class is nomenklatura. This distinction is necessary because the whole architecture of the Anticenter depends on the separation between class ownership and representative command.

I will answer the counterargument right away. If the nomenklatura has absolute command, then why is the nomenklatura not the owner, or why is this absolute command not primary power? Because within this work and this theory, property is the primary directing principle. It is determined by laws. Primary power, in this sense, is precisely property.

“Why in the case of the nomenklatura, is its absolute command, even though it is indeed absolute, not primary power or property?” I can raise the same objection with regard to managers and politicians. They really do direct the economy and have enormous influence. So why, then, do they not hold power in the West?

In the same way that they do not hold power in the West, while power belongs to the capitalists, as Karl Marx revealed, here I state clearly that it is the proletarians who possess the full totality of possession and sovereignty. The nomenklatura is only the class representative.

The third misreading concerns China and the prediction of democratization or collapse. The standard liberal expectation is that economic development, market-like forms, and the rise of a middle class should weaken one-party rule and create pressure for liberal democracy. This expectation comes from the wider modernization-theory tradition, where economic development is treated as a condition that increases the probability of democratic politics.¹¹¹² In China studies, this expectation often appeared as either a democratization prediction or a collapse prediction.¹³¹⁴

This reading fails because it treats the Chinese market-like sphere as if it were a normal capitalist market. In the terms of this work, China has an anti-market form of Contour B. Its private and market-like elements are not sovereign command structures. They are productive forms inside a system whose Command Core and Contour A remain intact. This is also where this work separates its conclusion from the literature on “party-state capitalism”: the empirical description is useful, but the category is rejected here, because the same structure is understood as the anti-market form of Contour B under RDP II, not as capitalism.¹⁵ Empirical literature also shows that Chinese economic reform did not mechanically produce democratization, and that the Chinese middle class does not necessarily function as a liberal-democratic class force.¹⁶¹²

The fourth misreading concerns the national bourgeoisie inside anti-market Contour B. China does rely on national bourgeois elements, private firms, and entrepreneurs as productive forces. This reliance is real. Official and journalistic sources describe the private sector as a major contributor to output, employment, and innovation, and recent policy signals again stress support for private enterprise.^171819202122 Research on Party organizations and corporate governance inside private firms also confirms that private production is politically embedded rather than sovereign.²³²⁴

This dependence is productive, not sovereign. The national bourgeoisie is used as a producer inside Contour B. It is tolerated and supported while it develops the system, expands production, contributes to innovation, and strengthens the material power of the Anticenter. When it tries to turn productive capacity into independent financial command, political influence, or a breach in Contour A, it is disciplined. The Ant Group case is an example of this logic: a private financial platform at the scale of national credit became a possible breach in the financial node of Contour A and was forced back under state command.³⁴⁵⁶²⁵

The fifth misreading is the general substitution of Contour B for the whole system. From this error come the formulas: if there is a private sector, then the system is capitalist; if China uses markets, it will become the West; if rich entrepreneurs exist, then the bourgeoisie rules. These formulas look only at execution and production. They ignore command and direction.

Conclusion

This work reconstructed the architecture of the Anticenter as the architecture of the Plan. The argument began from the relation between Center, periphery, and Anticenter, and then followed the internal logic through which anticapital becomes an organized historical system.

The Center was defined as imperialism, the world center of capital in relation to the periphery. The Anticenter was defined as the pole of concentration of the polar periphery, where potential anticapital receives a stable historical form. In this strict sense, real socialism and the RDP are the organized form of anticapital.

The material form of this organization is command over Contour A. Contour A is the commanding contour of the economy: the structure through which credit, land, resources, energy, infrastructure, transport, strategic industry, and external economic movement are directed. Under absolute proletarian sovereignty, (V=(0,2)), this contour is fully captured by the Command Core of the Anticenter and closed to bourgeois arbitrage.

This gives the first foundation of the Plan. The Plan is the structured form through which anticapital commands, directs, executes, reproduces, and develops.

The class that carries command inside this architecture is nomenklatura. Nomenklatura was defined as the unified political-managerial representative class of the Anticenter. It is the aggregate representative form through which the proletariat’s collective ownership becomes administration, command, and economic direction.

From this structure follow unified representation and monopolistic representation. Since Contour A is one commanding contour, the class that represents it must also be one political-managerial class. The political and managerial functions therefore fuse into the Command Core, understood as the aggregate nomenklatura and its party form.

The survival of this class requires self-sponsorship. Nomenklatura cannot place itself under the material sponsorship of capital without dissolving its own form. It reproduces itself by managing the economy whose commanding contour it represents. Its political survival therefore becomes economic management.

This is the point at which development becomes a law. Nomenklatura preserves itself by expanding the material power of the Anticenter. Since the Anticenter arises on the polar periphery, this expansion takes the historical form of catching-up development. The law of anticapital is therefore the law of catching-up development.

The architecture of this movement has three functional parts: command, direction, and execution. Command is the Command Core. Direction is Contour A. Execution is Contour B. The Command Core commands; Contour A directs; Contour B executes.

This triadic architecture explains both invariance and change. The Command Core and Contour A are the invariant parts of the system. Contour B is the variable part. It can change its form, methods, autonomy, and mode of execution while the deeper structure of command and direction remains intact.

The reproductive laws of the Anticenter follow from this architecture. Hermeticity connects the closed form of Contour A with catching-up development. Command connects the political power of the Command Core with the monopoly of Contour A. Reproduction connects the survival of the Anticenter with development. Legitimation connects the authority of Command Core and Contour A with the developmental output of Contour B. Fixation connects nomenklatura with the concrete form of Contour B through which it reproduces itself.

These laws also clarify common misreadings of anticapital. The collapse of the Soviet Union is read here as the collapse of a concrete Anticenter after the exhaustion of its developmental form. The power of nomenklatura is read as representative command, not private ownership. The Chinese market-like sphere is read as an anti-market form of Contour B, not as ordinary capitalism. The national bourgeoisie inside this sphere is read as a productive force subordinated to command, not as the ruling class.

The architecture of the Plan is the architecture through which anticapital becomes capable of reproducing itself. It concentrates proletarian power, holds Contour A, organizes nomenklatura as Command Core, directs Contour B, and turns development into the law of its own survival.

Footnotes

1. Vilen Isteni, “The Law of Realization,” Polar Marxism, 2026. URL: https://polarmarxism.com/en/research/law-of-realization. ↩

2. Vilen Isteni, “The Measure of Power,” Polar Marxism, 2026. URL: https://polarmarxism.com/en/research/measure-of-power. ↩

3. Shanghai Stock Exchange, “Decision to Suspend the Listing of Ant Group Co., Ltd. on the STAR Market,” Shanghai Stock Exchange, November 3, 2020. URL: https://english.sse.com.cn/news/newsrelease/c/5253317.shtml. ↩ ↩²

4. Reuters and Tony Munroe, “China Extends Crackdown on Jack Ma’s Empire with Enforced Revamp of Ant Group,” Reuters, April 12, 2021. URL: https://www.reuters.com/business/chinas-ant-group-become-financial-holding-company-central-bank-2021-04-12/. ↩ ↩²

5. Yingzhi Yang, Brenda Goh, and Kane Wu, “Ant Group Founder Jack Ma to Give Up Control in Key Revamp,” Reuters, January 7, 2023. URL: https://www.reuters.com/business/ant-group-says-jack-ma-relinquishes-control-company-2023-01-07/. ↩ ↩²

6. Reuters, “China Ends Ant Group’s Regulatory Revamp with Nearly $1 Billion Fine,” Reuters, July 7, 2023. URL: https://www.reuters.com/technology/china-end-ant-groups-regulatory-revamp-with-fine-least-11-bln-sources-2023-07-07/. ↩ ↩²

7. William Easterly and Stanley Fischer, “The Soviet Economic Decline,” The World Bank Economic Review 9, no. 3, 1995, 341–371. DOI: 10.1093/wber/9.3.341. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3989846. ↩

8. Vladimir Kontorovich, “Economists, Soviet Growth Slowdown, and the Collapse,” Europe-Asia Studies 53, no. 5, 2001, 675–695. DOI: 10.1080/09668130120063531. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/826365. ↩

9. Gabriel Di Bella, Oksana Dynnikova, and Slavi Slavov, The Russian State’s Size and its Footprint: Have They Increased? IMF Working Paper WP/19/53, International Monetary Fund, 2019. URL: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2019/03/09/the-russian-states-size-and-its-footprint-have-they-increased-46662. ↩

10. World Bank, State-Owned Enterprises in the Russian Federation, World Bank, 2019. URL: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/b7dc036b-aa95-5f0b-a640-89b0dd9d15bf. ↩

11. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53, no. 1, 1959, 69–105. DOI: 10.2307/1951731. ↩

12. Jie Chen and Chunlong Lu, “Democratization and the Middle Class in China: The Middle Class’s Attitudes toward Democracy,” Political Research Quarterly 64, no. 3, 2011, 705–719. DOI: 10.1177/1065912909359162. ↩ ↩²

13. Gordon G. Chang, The Coming Collapse of China, Random House, 2001. ↩

14. David Shambaugh, “The Coming Chinese Crackup,” The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2015. URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659198. ↩

15. Margaret M. Pearson, Meg Rithmire, and Kellee S. Tsai, “Party-State Capitalism in China,” Current History 120, no. 827, 2021, 207–213. DOI: 10.1525/curh.2021.120.827.207. URL: https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/CURH120827_01_Pearson_4ea34a0b-21d5-45af-a51a-c938eeeb6380.pdf. ↩

16. Mary E. Gallagher, “Reform and Openness: Why China’s Economic Reforms Have Delayed Democracy,” World Politics 54, no. 3, 2002, 338–372. DOI: 10.1353/wp.2002.0017. ↩

17. Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China, “China Adopts Law Dedicated to Promoting Private Sector,” Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China, April 30, 2025. URL: https://en.moj.gov.cn/2025-04/30/c_1090169.htm. ↩

18. Xinhua, “China Passes New Law in Major Push to Bolster Private Sector,” Xinhua, April 30, 2025. URL: https://english.news.cn/20250430/24d3cf09cedb49849de8e55079cf8ef7/c.html. ↩

19. Xinhua, “China’s Private Economy Gets New Boost as Landmark Law Takes Effect,” Xinhua, May 21, 2025. URL: https://english.news.cn/20250521/a5a59caf178b47e1a05d1f2bd41d04a2/c.html. ↩

20. Reuters, “China Adopts Law to Bolster Private Sector amid Trade War,” Reuters, April 30, 2025. URL: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-adopts-law-bolster-private-sector-amid-trade-war-2025-04-30/. ↩

21. Reuters, “China’s Xi Holds Rare Meet with Business Leaders amid US Tech Rivalry,” Reuters, February 17, 2025. URL: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-attends-symposium-private-enterprises-delivers-speech-2025-02-17/. ↩

22. Associated Press, “China’s Xi Promises Policy Stability at Meeting with Business Leaders, Including Alibaba’s Jack Ma,” Associated Press, February 17, 2025. URL: https://apnews.com/article/7898eb671dc6f7cb817cc6238328ea1b. ↩

23. Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, “The Party in Chinese Private Business,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 45, no. 3, 2016, 3–30. DOI: 10.1177/186810261604500301. URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/186810261604500301. ↩

24. Jude Blanchette, “The New Challenge of Communist Corporate Governance,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 15, 2021. URL: https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-challenge-communist-corporate-governance. ↩

25. Ming Zeng, “Institutional Reforms and Regulatory Shifts in China’s Digital Platform Sector: How Domain-Specific Centralization Shaped the 2020–2022 Transition,” Business and Politics, 2025. DOI: 10.1017/bap.2025.10062. URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-politics/article/institutional-reforms-and-regulatory-shifts-in-chinas-digital-platform-sector-how-domainspecific-centralization-shaped-the-20202022-transition/C5EF5AAD8A9CE84ACCDE5F32AA5C70E1. ↩