Hungary The Rise and Fall of Feasible Socialism

by Swain, Nigel

• ISBN13: 9780860915690
• ISBN10: 0860915697
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-06-17
• Publisher: VERSO
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Summary

Why were Hungarians, including those who would be considered radical in the West, happy to see the introduction of a market economy? Why was there no real opposition to the dismantling of socialist achievements like universal free education and health care? Nigel Swain's topical book answers these questions through one of the most thorough analyses to date of a socialist economy in practice and dissolution. Carefully tracing Hungary's postwar economic history, Swain shows why both Stalinist central planning and 'feasible' market socialism failed. He argues that these failures were caused not by imperfections in the Hungarian model, but by crucial problems inherent in the socialist project itself. Far from a eulogy to free-market capitalism, yet offering a sobering account of the consequences of socialist economic errors ”technological backwardness, corruption and declining morale ” Hungary will be a major contribution to political and economic debate on the left.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Collapse of the Socialist Economy	p. 7
The Demise of Popular Front Policies in Postwar Hungary	p. 33
The Heroic Age of Socialist Planning	p. 53
Economic Reform: Markets in the Present, Planning for the Future	p. 85
Market Socialism in Practice: Large Enterprises and the Mechanics of Planning	p. 115
Production Relations in Hungarian Socialism: Bureaucratic Control, Shortage and Second Economy	p. 153
Socialist Inequality: New Mechanisms within a Narrower Spread	p. 185
Conclusion	p. 225
Notes	p. 233
Index	p. 257
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