cliffhanger
27th September 2013, 23:15
Bourgeois economists tend to criticize Soviet-type economies as being poor at resource use and labour discipline, which they attribute to various problems with the model. A key argument made by these economists (such as Stiglitz and Kornai) is that the management structure had perverse institutional incentives and information access that made sufficient increases in efficiency impossible.
Every Communist-led economy, starting in the immediate post-Stalin era, started to dismantle some aspects of socialist planning in hopes of building better incentives into their models. Some developed industrial cartels (Germany), others extensive markets (Yugoslavia), or regional economic units (USSR), and various mixes. Anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists believe this was essentially capitalist in nature, and tied to the rise of revisionism after the death of Stalin. China stated that it was following Stalin's model, but in practice they varied dramatically from the Soviet model, especially after Deng Xiaoping took power.
Rightist socialists have had various management alternatives. For example, Trotsky was accused of supporting the militarization of labour. Ultraleftists, like anarchists, focus on decentralization through "worker's self-management". These rightist-in-practice models are less interesting to me, because they are mostly theoretical, deal with small numbers of ideologues, and are not scientific.
I have several books about socialist management, I'm still somewhat new to socialism, and I'd like to read more, so I was wondering if any of you had any reading recommendations. Obviously you can also discuss your perspective on management and socialist industrial organization, although I'd prefer if you focused on actual problems of real "socialist" countries, rather than discussing theoretical models used by rightists/Trotskyists or more bourgeois sources.
Every Communist-led economy, starting in the immediate post-Stalin era, started to dismantle some aspects of socialist planning in hopes of building better incentives into their models. Some developed industrial cartels (Germany), others extensive markets (Yugoslavia), or regional economic units (USSR), and various mixes. Anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists believe this was essentially capitalist in nature, and tied to the rise of revisionism after the death of Stalin. China stated that it was following Stalin's model, but in practice they varied dramatically from the Soviet model, especially after Deng Xiaoping took power.
Rightist socialists have had various management alternatives. For example, Trotsky was accused of supporting the militarization of labour. Ultraleftists, like anarchists, focus on decentralization through "worker's self-management". These rightist-in-practice models are less interesting to me, because they are mostly theoretical, deal with small numbers of ideologues, and are not scientific.
I have several books about socialist management, I'm still somewhat new to socialism, and I'd like to read more, so I was wondering if any of you had any reading recommendations. Obviously you can also discuss your perspective on management and socialist industrial organization, although I'd prefer if you focused on actual problems of real "socialist" countries, rather than discussing theoretical models used by rightists/Trotskyists or more bourgeois sources.