As far back as the “New Economic Policy” initiated by Lenin in the early 1920s to set the war-torn Soviet economy back on its feet, the idea of combining markets with socialist forms of property ownership has had considerable appeal …
Carlo Rosselli was a socialist before becoming a liberal socialist. He was a sui generis socialist, because from the beginning socialism for him was a moral ideal totally free of Marxist orthodoxy. Rosselli’s first explicit adherence to socialist ideas goes …
The phrase “liberal socialism” has a strange sound to many who are accustomed to current political terminology. The word “liberalism” unfortunately has been used to smuggle so many different kinds of merchandise and has been so much the preserve of …
Recent history has not been kind to the ideas of “socialism” and “tradition.” The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union— “the only existing socialism” according to some friends and foes alike—seems to make socialism an …
Disagreements may arise because of differences in opinion and evaluation or because of differently known and understood facts and logic. I sympathize with the spirit of Thomas Weisskopf’s essay (Dissent 1992), but I want to make three specific comments about …
Can the ideals of socialism survive the collapse of “actually existing socialism” and the current discrediting of the historic struggles against inequality? The very idea of social justice is threatened by the new anticollectivism, and the project of economic democracy …
Karl Marx ruled out any role for the market in a post-capitalist economy. “Within the cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of production,” he wrote in the Critique of the Gotha Program, “the producers do not exchange …
The idea of a market-based form of socialism was first given serious attention in the 1920s, when it was promoted by moderates within the socialist movement as an alternative to the marketless form of socialism identified with Marx’s vision of …
Fashioning models for a successful socialist economy is an idiosyncratic inclination these days, but one that we share with John Roemer. He’s not willing to concede that the socialist project has been buried irretrievably beneath the wreckage of communism, and …
I will respond to the Barkan and Belkin points seriatim. On government control of investment: There have been, and are, selective credit controls in many capitalist countries, and the “lobbying hordes” that Barkan and Belkin fear have not swept down …
David Miller’s “A Vision of Market Socialism” (Summer 1991) is a thought-provoking contribution to Dissent’s ongoing discussion of this topic. He deserves our appreciation for the way in which he specifies five basic socialist values and then defends his model …
Since the fall from power of the ruling parties in Eastern Europe during the amazing events of autumn 1989, most commentators in the West and the East have proclaimed the death of communism. If communism is defined as consisting of …
The collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe reopens the question whether there is any form of socialism that might be adopted, with popular support, in the advanced societies. The experience of communism sug- gests, fairly unequivocally, that such a …
The collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe reopens the question whether there is any form of socialism that might be adopted, with popular support, in the advanced societies. The experience of communism suggests, fairly unequivocally, that such a system …
The term “scientific socialism” is an oxymoron. Science pertains to the study of what is, whereas socialism is a vision of what can or should be. To deny scientific status to socialism is not to denigrate its central importance. It …
