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| Isaak Illich Rubin | |
|---|---|
| Name | Isaak Illich Rubin |
| Native name | Исаак Ильич Рубин |
| Birth date | 1886 |
| Death date | 1937 |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Occupation | Economist, Marxist theorist |
| Notable works | Studies in the Theory of Value and Price |
Isaak Illich Rubin was a Russian Marxian economist and theorist of value whose work on commodity form and Marxist political economy became influential among scholars of Karl Marx, Marxism, and Political economy in the twentieth century. Born in the Russian Empire and active during the tumultuous years of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Rubin combined scholarship at institutions such as Saint Petersburg State University and Moscow State University with political activity in revolutionary organizations like the Socialist Revolutionary Party and interactions with figures from the Bolshevik Party and Mensheviks. His career was shaped by debates with contemporaries such as Vladimir Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin, Leon Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg, and by repression under the Soviet Union.
Rubin was born in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire into a Jewish family, studied at the University of Warsaw before transferring to Saint Petersburg State University, and was influenced by teachers from the German Historical School, Austrian School exiles, and readings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Adam Smith. During his student years he associated with members of the Bund (General Jewish Labour Bund), Socialist Revolutionary Party, and contacts among Kadets and Octobrists circles, while engaging with writings of Georgi Plekhanov and Vladimir Lenin. Rubin took part in intellectual salons frequented by émigrés from Berlin and Vienna, consulting editions of Das Kapital and essays by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and David Ricardo.
Rubin lectured at institutions including Saint Petersburg State University and later at Moscow State University, participating in Soviet scholarly bodies such as the Institute of Red Professors and the Communist Academy. He engaged in polemics with economists linked to Iskra circles and debated methodological issues with proponents of Materialism and defenders of Historical materialism. Rubin contributed to journals like Pravda, Izvestia, and specialist periodicals aligned with Soviet economic planning discussions, while corresponding with scholars in Germany, France, Poland, and Britain. His academic network included dialogues with Evgeny Preobrazhensky, Alexander Bogdanov, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, and younger students who later taught at the Higher Party School.
Rubin's major contribution, "Studies in the Theory of Value and Price", elaborated on the commodity, value form, and the role of labour theory of value within Marx's critique of political economy, contrasting interpretations advanced by Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Kautsky. He emphasized the form of value and the distinctiveness of commodity fetishism as analyzed in Das Kapital. Rubin critiqued monetarist readings like those of Ludwig von Mises and John Maynard Keynes, and challenged orthodoxies associated with Marginalism and the Austrian School. His methodological stance engaged the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and drew on debates with György Lukács, Anton Pannekoek, and Antonio Gramsci about reification, consciousness, and class theory. Rubin also produced studies on price formation under capitalism, interacting with analyses by David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and Jean-Baptiste Say.
Politically, Rubin associated with revolutionary currents during the pre-revolutionary period and the aftermath of 1917, involving contacts with the Mensheviks and debates with the Bolsheviks over party democracy, War Communism, and the New Economic Policy. He took part in editorial and organizational work that brought him into conflict with authorities during intra-party struggles against critics like Nikolai Bukharin and Grigory Zinoviev. Rubin's positions on theoretical and practical questions attracted scrutiny from security organs such as the Cheka and later the NKVD, particularly during purges targeting intellectuals with ties to groups accused of "deviationism" or "wrecking" linked to former Russian Social Democratic Labour Party factions.
Rubin was arrested during the Great Purge era amidst mass campaigns led by Joseph Stalin and directives from Lavrentiy Beria's apparatus, subjected to trials influenced by procedures established under USSR law of the 1930s. He experienced periods of imprisonment, internal exile to Siberian locations like Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk Krai, and confinement in Butyrka Prison and other detention facilities used for political prisoners. Rubin died in custody in 1937; his fate mirrored that of many intellectuals purged in the late 1930s alongside figures such as Boris Hessen and Alexander Chayanov and was later reassessed during periods of rehabilitation under leaders like Nikita Khrushchev.
After his rehabilitation, Rubin's work was rediscovered by scholars in the Soviet Union, Western Europe, United States, and Israel, influencing debates in Western Marxism, Analytical Marxism, and among historians of economic thought. His focus on the value form informed research by Harold J. Laski-influenced British Marxists, students of Karl Polanyi, and theorists such as David Harvey, Terry Eagleton, Moishe Postone, István Mészáros, and G.A. Cohen. Rubin's texts have appeared in translations and editions associated with presses and institutions like Cambridge University Press, University of Chicago Press, and university departments at Columbia University, University of Oxford, and University of California, Berkeley. Contemporary scholars in Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy, History of economic thought, and Political theory continue to cite his analyses of commodity form and critique of reductionist readings of Marx.
Category:Russian economists Category:Marxian economists Category:Soviet purges