Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR is a work of political economy written by Joseph Stalin in 1951. It was one of the last works published before his death. In it, he made the claim that the Soviet Union had reached the lower stage of communism. The main impetus for the book came from the discussions around the preparations for a new textbook on political economy that would be standard throughout the communist movement. One of the main theoretical debates was on whether the law of value still operated within a socialist economy. Some economists claimed that Karl Marx in Das Kapital had only meant for it to apply to capitalist exchange, but Stalin insisted that it still operated under a socialist economy. Nonetheless, he argued that it was a historical and not eternal law and that i