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Author: János Matyas Kovács
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793631786
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425
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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: János Matyas Kovács
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793631786
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425
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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: Leigh Phillips
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178663516X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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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: Erik S. Reinert
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1782544682
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 849
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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: Iván Szelényi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004413197
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
This book intends to be a contribution to the “varieties of capitalism” paradigm. The theoretical background is Weber’s theory of legitimacy. Was communism ever “legitimate”? What kind of legitimacy claims were made in the transition from communism to capitalism? Central Europe was closer to the Western “liberal” model. Russia built capitalism in a patrimonial way. China followed its own unique way; some called it “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Putin experiments with an innovation for post-communist capitalism. He confronts the “oligarchs” and reallocates property from those who challenge his political authority to old and new loyal ones. In conclusion, the central question is to what extent is “Putinism” a generic model for post-communist capitalism?
Author: Francis Spufford
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555970419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 437
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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: Ludwig von Mises
Publisher: VM eBooks
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 766
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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: Grigore Pop-Eleches
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887828
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 355
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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: Michel Christian
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110532409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 582
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Book Description
The idea of planning economy and engineering social life has often been linked with Communist regimes’ will of control. However, the persuasion that social and economic processes could and should be regulated was by no means limited to them. Intense debates on these issues developed already during the First World War in Europe and became globalized during the World Economic crisis. During the Cold War, such discussions fuelled competition between two models of economic and social organisation but they also revealed the convergences and complementarities between them. This ambiguity, so often overlooked in histories of the Cold War, represents the central issue of the book organized around three axes. First, it highlights how know-how on planning circulated globally and were exchanged by looking at international platforms and organizations. The volume then closely examines specificities of planning ideas and projects in the Communist and Capitalist World. Finally, it explores East-West channels generated by exchanges around issues of planning which functioned irrespective of the Iron Curtain and were exported in developing countries. The volume thus contributes to two fields undergoing a process of profound reassessment: the history of modernisation and of the Cold War.
Author: United Nations Human Settlements Programme
Publisher: UN-HABITAT
ISBN: 9211320038
Category : City planning
Languages : en
Pages : 98
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Book Description
This publication assesses the effectiveness of urban planning as a tool for dealing with the unprecedented challenges facing 21st-century cities and for enhancing sustainable urbanization. There is now a realization that, in many parts of the world, urban planning systems have changed very little and are often contributors to urban problems rather than functioning as tools for human and environmental improvement. Against this background, the global report's central argument is that, in most parts of the world, current approaches to planning must change and that a new role for urban planning in sustainable urban development has to be found.--Publisher's description.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
