A New Model Of Socialism

Economic democracy is essential for creating a truly democratic political sphere. This engaging book uses Marxist theory to hypothesise that capitalism is not a democratic system, and that a modern socialist system of producer cooperatives and democratically managed enterprises is urgently needed. A New Model of Socialism focuses on the current crisis of the political Left, a result of the collapse of the Soviet model of society and the decline of statism and kingship. Bruno Jossa expands on existing theories to explore Marx's notions on economic democracy in a modern setting. He advocates a move away from the centralised planning form of economic socialism towards a self-management system for firms that does not prioritise the interests of one class over another, in order to achieve greater economic democracy. It is argued that the establishment of such a system of democratic firms is the precondition for reducing intervention in the economy, thus enabling the State to perform its ultimate function of serving the public interest. This timely book is ideal for advanced scholars of Marxist, radical and heterodox economic theory, as well as academics with an interest in the rise of socialism in our modern world. Indeed, it will also be of value to all those seeking a viable and practical alternative to existing capitalist and socialist thinking.

The failure of command central planning in the twentieth century has led to a general disillusionment within the socialist movement worldwide. Some alternatives to capitalism have been proposed since the end of the Cold War, but none has offered an alternative form of economic calculation. This book explains how modern information technology may be used to implement a new method of economic calculation that could bring an end to capitalism and make socialism possible. In this book, the author critically examines a number of socialist proposals that have been put forward since the end of the Cold War. It is shown that although these proposals have many merits, their inability effectively to incorporate the benefits of information technology into their models has limited their ability to solve the problem of socialist construction. The final section of the book proposes an entirely new model of socialist development, based on a "needs profile" that makes it possible to convert the needs of large numbers of people into data that can be used as a guide for resource allocation. This analysis makes it possible to rethink and carefully specify the conditions necessary for the abolition of capital and consequently the requirements for socialist revolution and, ultimately, communist society. Information Technology and Socialist Construction will be of interest to students and scholars of political economy, the history of economic thought, labour economics and industrial economics.

In this text, Roemer proposes a new future of socialism based on a redefinition of market socialism. The Achille's heel of socialism has always been maintaining innovation and efficiency in an economy in which income is equally distributed. Roemer points out that large capitalist firms have already solved a similar problem: in those firms, profits are distributed to numerous shareholders, yet they continue to innovate and compete. The author argues for a modified version of socialism, not necessarily based on public ownership, but founded on equality of opportunity and political influence.

A historical account of ideology in the Global South as the postwar laboratory of socialism, its legacy following the Cold War, and the continuing influence of socialist ideas worldwide. In the first decades after World War II, many newly independent Asian and African countries and established Latin American states pursued a socialist development model. Jeremy Friedman traces the socialist experiment over forty years through the experience of five countries: Indonesia, Chile, Tanzania, Angola, and Iran. These states sought paths to socialism without formal adherence to the Soviet bloc or the programs that Soviets, East Germans, Cubans, Chinese, and other outsiders tried to promote. Instead, they attempted to forge new models of socialist development through their own trial and error, together with the help of existing socialist countries, demonstrating the flexibility and adaptability of socialism. All five countries would become Cold War battlegrounds and regional models, as new policies in one shaped evolving conceptions of development in another. Lessons from the collapse of democracy in Indonesia were later applied in Chile, just as the challenge of political Islam in Indonesia informed the policies of the left in Iran. Efforts to build agrarian economies in West Africa influenced Tanzania’s approach to socialism, which in turn influenced the trajectory of the Angolan model. Ripe for Revolution shows socialism as more adaptable and pragmatic than often supposed. When we view it through the prism of a Stalinist orthodoxy, we miss its real effects and legacies, both good and bad. To understand how socialism succeeds and fails, and to grasp its evolution and potential horizons, we must do more than read manifestos. We must attend to history.

The failure of command central planning in the twentieth century has led to a general disillusionment within the socialist movement worldwide. Some alternatives to capitalism have been proposed since the end of the Cold War, but none has offered an alternative form of economic calculation. This book explains how modern information technology may be used to implement a new method of economic calculation that could bring an end to capitalism and make socialism possible. In this book, the author critically examines a number of socialist proposals that have been put forward since the end of the Cold War. It is shown that although these proposals have many merits, their inability effectively to incorporate the benefits of information technology into their models has limited their ability to solve the problem of socialist construction. The final section of the book proposes an entirely new model of socialist development, based on a "needs profile" that makes it possible to convert the needs of large numbers of people into data that can be used as a guide for resource allocation. This analysis makes it possible to rethink and carefully specify the conditions necessary for the abolition of capital and consequently the requirements for socialist revolution and, ultimately, communist society. Information Technology and Socialist Construction will be of interest to students and scholars of political economy, the history of economic thought, labour economics and industrial economics.

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.

Christopher Pierson assesses the evidence of terminal decline, but finds rather a whole series of deep-seated challenges to traditional forms of socialist and social democratic thinking. Above all, these problems are to be found in the political economy of social democracy and its commitment to incremental change in the context of an increasingly globalized market economy. The latter chapters of the book are devoted to an assessment of market socialism, one of the most vigorous and innovative attempts to seek to recast socialist aspirations under these quite changed circumstances. In essence, market socialism represents an attempt to reconcile new forms of social ownership with the seeming ubiquity of the market. Having outlined this position, Pierson carefully and systematically critiques it and, in the process, develops a set of distinctive arguments about the nature of social ownership, the potential of the labor-managed economy, and the appropriate forms for an extension of economic democracy.