The collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe reopens the question whether there is any form of socialism that might be adopted, with popular support, in the advanced societies. The experience of communism suggests, fairly unequivocally, that such a system …
The term “scientific socialism” is an oxymoron. Science pertains to the study of what is, whereas socialism is a vision of what can or should be. To deny scientific status to socialism is not to denigrate its central importance. It …
Capitalism doesn’t work: the 1930s proved that. Communism doesn’t work: the 1980s proved that. So what works? Socialism—of the democratic variety, of course. But, viewed concretely, as it is applied in practice, what is socialism today? The answer is—the mixed …
American socialism has endured many crises. But these have mostly been, or appeared to be, crises of agency and strategy, brought on by repeated failures to build the movement or by capitalism’s disconcerting capacity to emerge strengthened from depression and …
Poking around Slightly-Imaginary-Sweden (SIS), even the skeptical socialist is impressed. A solidaristic wage policy (centralized bargaining to achieve equal pay for equal work nationwide) forces unproductive enterprises to shape up or go under. This boosts overall economic efficiency. Strong tax …
Why go beyond an advanced welfare state—beyond what Robert Heilbroner calls “real but slightly imaginary” Sweden? How would the passage from welfare state to “socialism” be manifest? To create a more democratic society. By expanding substantive, that is, social and …
The demise of communism after the revolutions of 1989 has been, understandably, hailed by the right as the ultimate “proof” of the fiasco of the socialist idea as a whole. More surprising than the rightist glee is the selfquerying mood …
Oscar Lange is known in the West, above all, as the author of the classical and widely criticized model of markt socialism. An enormous amount has been written about this model, some of it developing Lange’s idea and much of …
Without an imaginative utopian dimension, socialist thought remains excessively rooted in the present. It ends up as something very worthwhile, that is, the reform of the existing system; but it remains restricted to what is “realistic” within the existing order. …
I accept for the sake of argument Bob Heilbroner’s way of posing his initial question, although he phrases it in terms (so it seems to me) of two separate, static forms of social governance—when in reality, capitalism and socialism are …
I have recently posed a question to which I have no answer, but which seems to me to go to the heart of the outlook for democratic socialism, at least in the advanced capitalist countries. The question is: how far …
In order to find out how much a country is socialist, it is necessary first to define socialism. Characteristically, no clear, precise, and commonly accepted definition exists. My own definition is extensively discussed elsewhere (The Political Economy of Socialism, Sharpe, …
An attack on “market socialism” is now coming from a number of East European economists, converts to free-market ideology, who usually express regret at their own “naive” illusions of earlier times about the “reformability” of Soviet-type “socialism.” A leading exponent …
The term “market socialism” has no unique reference. It is a blanket term that has emerged to cover all versions of socialism in which markets are given a significant role to play. If there is any community of view among …
Among American socialists, “market socialism” (a publicly owned economy relying mainly on the market mechanism for its allocative decisions) has commonly been considered a misnomer—when it has been considered at all. But in France a faction of the Socialist party, …
