Author: János Matyas Kovács Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1793631786 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 425
Book Description
This volume examines concepts of central planning, a cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. It revolves around the theory of “optimal planning” which promised a profound modernization of Stalinist-style verbal planning. Encouraged by cybernetic dreams in the 1950s and supporting the strategic goals of communist leaders in the Cold War, optimal planners offered the ruling elites a panacea for the recurrent crises of the planned economy. Simultaneously, their planning projects conveyed the pride of rational management and scientific superiority over the West. The authors trace the rise and fall of the research program in the communist era in eight countries of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, and China, describing why the mission of optimization was doomed to fail and why the failure was nevertheless very slow. The theorists of optimal planning contributed to the rehabilitation of mathematical culture in economic research in the communist countries, and thus, to a neoclassical turn in economics all over the ex-communist world). However, because they have not rejected optimal planning as “computopia,” there is a large space left behind for future generations to experiment with Big Optimal Plans anew—based, at this time, on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Author: Francis Spufford Publisher: Graywolf Press ISBN: 1555970419 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 437
Book Description
"Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . . Freewheeling and fabulous." —The Times (London) Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending. Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.
Author: Maya Vinokour Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501773682 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
Work Flows investigates the emergence of "flow" as a crucial metaphor within Russian labor culture since 1870. Maya Vinokour frames concern with fluid channeling as immanent to vertical power structures—whether that verticality derives from the state, as in Stalin's Soviet Union and present-day Russia, or from the proliferation of corporate monopolies, as in the contemporary Anglo-American West. Originating in pre-revolutionary bio-utopianism, the Russian rhetoric of liquids and flow reached an apotheosis during Stalin's First Five-Year Plan and re-emerged in post-Soviet "managed democracy" and Western neoliberalism. The literary, philosophical, and official texts that Work Flows examines give voice to the Stalinist ambition of reforging not merely individual bodies, but space and time themselves. By mobilizing the understudied thematic of fluidity, Vinokour offers insight into the nexus of philosophy, literature, and science that underpinned Stalinism and remains influential today. Work Flows demonstrates that Stalinism is not a historical phenomenon restricted to the period 1922-1953, but a symptom of modernity as it emerged in the twentieth century. Stalinism's legacy extends far beyond the bounds of the former Soviet Union, emerging in seemingly disparate settings like post-Soviet Russia and Silicon Valley.
Author: Leigh Phillips Publisher: Verso Books ISBN: 178663516X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
Are multi-national corporations like Walmart and Amazon laying the groundwork for international socialism? For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.
Author: Ludwig von Mises Publisher: VM eBooks ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 766
Book Description
Socialism is the watchword and the catchword of our day. The socialist idea dominates the modem spirit. The masses approve of it. It expresses the thoughts and feelings of all; it has set its seal upon our time. When history comes to tell our story it will write above the chapter “The Epoch of Socialism.” As yet, it is true, Socialism has not created a society which can be said to represent its ideal. But for more than a generation the policies of civilized nations have been directed towards nothing less than a gradual realization of Socialism.17 In recent years the movement has grown noticeably in vigour and tenacity. Some nations have sought to achieve Socialism, in its fullest sense, at a single stroke. Before our eyes Russian Bolshevism has already accomplished something which, whatever we believe to be its significance, must by the very magnitude of its design be regarded as one of the most remarkable achievements known to world history. Elsewhere no one has yet achieved so much. But with other peoples only the inner contradictions of Socialism itself and the fact that it cannot be completely realized have frustrated socialist triumph. They also have gone as far as they could under the given circumstances. Opposition in principle to Socialism there is none. Today no influential party would dare openly to advocate Private Property in the Means of Production. The word “Capitalism” expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas. In seeking to combat Socialism from the standpoint of their special class interest these opponents—the parties which particularly call themselves “bourgeois” or “peasant”—admit indirectly the validity of all the essentials of socialist thought. For if it is only possible to argue against the socialist programme that it endangers the particular interests of one part of humanity, one has really affirmed Socialism. If one complains that the system of economic and social organization which is based on private property in the means of production does not sufficiently consider the interests of the community, that it serves only the purposes of single strata, and that it limits productivity; and if therefore one demands with the supporters of the various “social-political” and “social-reform” movements, state interference in all fields of economic life, then one has fundamentally accepted the principle of the socialist programme. Or again, if one can only argue against socialism that the imperfections of human nature make its realization impossible, or that it is inexpedient under existing economic conditions to proceed at once to socialization, then one merely confesses that one has capitulated to socialist ideas. The nationalist, too, affirms socialism, and objects only to its Internationalism. He wishes to combine Socialism with the ideas of Imperialism and the struggle against foreign nations. He is a national, not an international socialist; but he, also, approves of the essential principles of Socialism.
Author: Erik S. Reinert Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing ISBN: 1782544682 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 849
Book Description
The Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development explores the theories and approaches which, over a prolonged period of time, have existed as viable alternatives to today’s mainstream and neo-classical tenets. With a total of 40 specially commissioned chapters, written by the foremost authorities in their respective fields, this volume represents a landmark in the field of economic development. It elucidates the richness of the alternative and sometimes misunderstood ideas which, in different historical contexts, have proved to be vital to the improvement of the human condition. The subject matter is approached from several complementary perspectives. From a historical angle, the Handbook charts the mercantilist and cameralist theories that emerged from the Renaissance and developed further during the Enlightenment. From a geographical angle, it includes chapters on African, Chinese, Indian, and Muslim approaches to economic development. Different schools are also explored and discussed including nineteenth century US development theory, Marxist, Schumpeterian, Latin American structuralism, regulation theory and world systems theories of development. In addition, the Handbook has chapters on important events and institutions including The League of Nations, The Havana Charter, and UNCTAD, as well as on particularly influential development economists. Contemporary topics such as the role of finance, feminism, the agrarian issue, and ecology and the environment are also covered in depth. This comprehensive Handbook offers an unrivalled review and analysis of alternative and heterodox theories of economic development. It should be read by all serious scholars, teachers and students of development studies, and indeed anyone interested in alternatives to development orthodoxy.
Author: Grigore Pop-Eleches Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400887828 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 355
Book Description
It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism's Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology—the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies' lasting influence on public opinion, Communism's Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.
Author: Gareth Dale Publisher: Polity ISBN: 0745640710 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.
Author: János Matyas Kovács
Author: Till Düppe
Author: Francis Spufford
Author: Maya Vinokour
Author: Leigh Phillips
Author: Ludwig von Mises
Author: Erik S. Reinert
Author: Grigore Pop-Eleches
Author: Ludwig Von Mises
Author: Gareth Dale