Reforming Communism, Refusing Capitalism: The Rise and Fall of the Concept of "Socialist Market" focuses on the concept of socialist market,: a cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies undergoing economic reforms from the 1950s onward. Encouraged by the success of non-capitalist mixed economies, market reformers (also called market socialists) offered the communist ruling elites a remedy for the persistent crises of the planned economy. Besides optimal planning and pluralization of social ownership, this was the third major attempt under existing socialism to revise the communist utopia of a centrally planned economy free from private property and the market. The authors trace the rise and fall of marketization theories in the communist era in eight countries of Eastern Europe (including the Soviet Union) and China, describing why the mission of mixing the planned economy and the market, while refusing large-scale private ownership and accepting one-party rule, was doomed to fail. The protagonists of the socialist market contributed to the rehabilitation of certain liberal doctrines in economic research and policy in the Soviet empire and beyond, which did not develop into a coherent liberal (let alone, neoliberal) program.
Muu info
This book focuses on the concept of socialist market, a cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies undergoing economic reforms from the 1950s onward.
List of tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Marketing the Market? Understanding Reformism in Communist Economic Thought
János Mátyás Kovács, Institute for Human Sciences, Austria
Chapter 1
At the Periphery of Market Socialism. Market Concepts in Bulgaria
Pencho D. Penchev, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria
Chapter 2
Reform of the System or Reform Within the System? Intellectual Traditions and
the Long Market Debate in Mainland China and Taiwan
Sheng Peng, University of Vienna, Austria
Chapter 3
Not a Struggle Forever. Central Planning and Ideas of Market Reform in
Czechoslovakia, 19451990
Julius Horváth, Central European University, Budapest
Chapter 4
East Germany A Case of Failed Modernization
Hans-Jürgen Wagener, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) and
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands
Chapter 5
How Many Waves Did Reform Economists Ride in Communist Hungary? Second
Thoughts on the New Economic Mechanism
János Mátyás Kovács, Institute for Human Sciences, Austria
Chapter 6
Marketization of the Socialist Economy. Debates in Poland under Communist
Rule
Piotr Korys, University of Warsaw, Poland and Maciej Tyminski, University of
Warsaw, Poland
Chapter 7
Market Culture in Romanian Economic Thought under Communism
Valentin Cojanu, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania
Chapter 8
Unholy Alliance. Socialism and the Market in Soviet Economic Discourse
Oleg Ananyin, Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Russia and Denis Melnik, Higher School of Economics University, Russia
Chapter 9
The Rise and Fall of Socialist Market Economy
Joe Mencinger, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Conclusion
Reflections on an Oxymoron. The Sad Fate of the Concept of the Socialist
Market
János Mátyás Kovács, Institute for Human Sciences, Austria
Index
About the editor
About the Contributors
János Mátyás Kovács is senior member at the Research Center for the History of Transformations at the University of Vienna, and permanent fellow emeritus at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna.
