Market Socialism

This timely volume advocates pragmatic market socialism and offers a penetrating critique of the entire range of capitalist apologetics. As Yunker envisions it, market socialism would virtually duplicate the everyday economic functions of market capitalist economies, such as the United States', but with public ownership of large, established corporations, profits being distributed among the entire labor force. Pragmatic market socialism would be a means of enhancing economic justice and fairness without sacrificing the efficiency advantages of free enterprise and the market economy.

Can we conceive of a market economy that fulfills the ideals of socialism? Here, Miller provides a comprehensive examination, from the standpoint of political theory, of an economy in which market mechanisms retain a central role, but in which capitalist patterns of ownership have been superseded. He shows that liberal ideas of freedom, justice, and efficiency cannot be used to vindicate laissez-faire capitalism, and rebuts left-wing criticisms of a socialist market economy. Justifying his ideas as a workable option, he then presents a new model of the socialist state, whose central idea is that of democratic citizenship.

Distinguished economists Brus and Laski--who were involved with the Planning Office of the Polish economy in the 1950s and 1960s--here develop a theoretical system of economic management which avoids the failings of both market capitalism and central planning. This book examines Marxists claim to socialism's economic rationality and studies the application of the concept in the "real socialism" of Communist party orthodoxy as well as in the tentative attempts at "market socialism", particularly in Hungary and Yugoslavia. The analysis focuses on general features of the evolution of the socialist economic system, but national experiences are used to point out the advances that have been made and the flaws in the theoretical models that have been developed.

The rise of the New Right and the collapse of state communism in 1989 has fundamentally changed political thinking in the late twentieth century. Rodney Barker has revised and extended his classic text - Political Ideas in Modern Britain - in the light of these changes. His accessible account of political thinking in Britain since the 1880s now includes detailed analysis of: * the demise of traditional conservatism and socialism * the rise and decline of the New Right * the growth of feminism, liberalism and pluralism Political Ideas in Modern Britain charts the changing intellectual landscape of political thinking, illustrating how contemporary political thought is both rooted in tradition and a radical transformation of it. Whether the future is liberal, communitarian, pluralist, or simply uncertain, this is an essential guide for students of British politics. Rodney Barker is Senior Lecturer in Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

"An cross-disciplinary text surveying Asian economies for MBA students and others, offering some surprising conclusions."

The destruction or collapse of a social system is bound to be cataclysmic, and the collapse of the communist system which has played itself out at across twenty-eight countries is no exception. The political, social and economic relations which governed these societies are all being simultaneously changed in a fundamental way. In such a context the presence of macroeconomic instability is hardly surprising. Yet, it is the job of economists to try to identify the specific causes of economic phenomena, even when they are caught up in the whirlwind of history. This book, by a participant in the events, examines the causes of very high inflation and large fall in statistically measured output in the post-Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It focuses on the fundamental nature of the shift from supply constrained economies (in which there is no unemployment) to ones which are constrained by demand; on the reconstruction of monetary and credit systems; and on the central role of macroeconomic stabilization and generalised liberalisation in creating the basis for private sector growth. Many of the chapters have grown out of policy debates in which the author participated.