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 …
The following interview with the Socialist Prime Minister of France has been excerpted from one conducted by Ferdinando Adornato and Gabriele Invernizzi that appeared in Verso it due mila #1: La nuova civilta (supplement to L’Espresso, March 18, 1990). F.A. …
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 …
Universal medical insurance and universal access to care under a system of responsible cost containment remain on the American agenda. Since Harry Truman proposed national health insurance (NHI), debates about this vital policy issue have waxed (as in the early …
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 …
It’s not the populist moment yet—not because the elements aren’t there, but in large part because the Democrats don’t know how to put them together. The 1990 election results point to a voter revolt in which neither the left nor …
American workers have more than two trillion dollars in their pension funds. They own about onequarter of all the corporate shares on the New York exchange and account for almost half of daily trading activity. Having tripled in size in …
Alike-minded contemporary of Andrei Sakharov’s died over a year ago in Indonesia. Dr. Soedjatmoko (1922-89)—”Koko” to all who knew him—had been rector of the United Nations University and Indonesian ambassador to the United States. As Indonesia’s leading intellectual, his involvement …
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, …
For over thirty years the Hungarian economist Janos Kornai has been a sophisticated analyst of the communist command economies. His writings have been characterized by a mixture, rare among economists, of rigor, skepticism, and sympathy. Until recently Kornai rejected the …
Why did we make the Bomb? The question is, of course, naïve. There was no single reason. Nor could there be a one-word answer, such as fear or deterrence, or a two-word answer, for example, unjustified fear, that would be …
“In the revolutionary year 1989,” said Willy Brandt, “not only is the social democratic idea impelled toward reality—now also reality is impelled toward the social democratic idea.” In a small way, his prophecy was confirmed by the surprising election of …
