Alienation and the Soviet Economy The Collapse of the Socialist Era

by Roberts, Paul Craig; Wildavsky, Aaron

• ISBN13: 9780945999638
• ISBN10: 0945999631
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781598132977
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1990-02-01
• Publisher: Independent Institute
• More Book Details

Summary

The first edition of this seminal book in 1971 pointed out the fatal defects of Marxist theory that would lead to the collapse of the Soviet economy. In this revised edition, Paul Craig Roberts examines how reality triumphed over Marxist theory and the implications for the future of Russia and eastern Europe. In 1971, Roberts created a firestorm among professional Sovietologists by proclaiming that the economies of the USSR and its East Bloc allies were doomed because their planned economies were, in reality, anything but planned. Expanding on his original ideas, Roberts demonstrates in this book the fatal shortcomings of Marxist economies, ranging from misallocation of resources to ersatz capitalistic concepts grafted onto a system that calls for production without regard to profit. Roberts argues that the economies of the nations emerging from the USSR's collapse must grasp the profound truths in this book if they are to become viable.

Author Biography

Paul Craig Roberts is the chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and a nationally syndicated columnist.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Aaron Wildavsky	xi
Preface	xvii
Acknowledgments	xix
Introduction to the Revised Edition	xxi
1 Alienation and Central Planning in Marx	1	(19)
Alienation	3	(1)
Embodiment of Alienation in Commodity Production	4	(5)
Transcendence of Alienation	9	(6)
Marx's Classification of Economic Systems	15	(5)
2 "War Communism"-Product of Marxian Ideas	20	(28)
The Prevalent Interpretation	23	(4)
The Evidence from Lenin	27	(15)
How the Truth Was Buried	42	(6)
3 Polycentricity and Hierarchy	48	(22)
An Organizational Model of the Market	49	(8)
Nature of Hierarchic Organization	57	(9)
Market Signals	66	(4)
4 The Polycentric Soviet Economy	70	(19)
5 Oskar Lange's Theory of Socialist Planning: An Obscurant of Socialist Aspirations	89	(15)
The Logical Problem of the Lange Paradigm	91	(1)
The Theory of Oskar Lange	92	(2)
The Absence of Hierarchical Organization	94	(2)
The Non-applicability of the Marginal Rule	96	(2)
Sources of the Langesque Illusion of Planning	98	(3)
The New School of Socialist Thought	101	(3)
6 Speculative Excess as a Force in History	104	(5)
Appendix: A Critique of Other Interpretations of Marxian Alienation	109	(9)
Index	118	(5)
Note on the Author	123