Socialist economics

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Socialist economics comprises the economic theories, practices and norms of hypothetical and existing socialist economic systems.[1] A socialist economic system is characterized by social ownership and operation of the means of production[2][3][4][5][6][7] that may take the form of autonomous cooperatives or direct public ownership wherein production is carried out directly for use rather than for profit.[8][9][10][11] Socialist systems that utilize markets for allocating capital goods and factors of production among economic units are designated market socialism. When planning is utilized, the economic system is designated as a socialist planned economy. Non-market forms of socialism usually include a system of accounting based on calculation-in-kind to value resources and goods.[12][13]

Socialist economics has been associated with different schools of economic thought. Marxian economics provided a foundation for socialism based on analysis of capitalism[14] while neoclassical economics and evolutionary economics provided comprehensive models of socialism.[15] During the 20th century, proposals and models for both socialist planned and market economies were based heavily on neoclassical economics or a synthesis of neoclassical economics with Marxian or institutional economics.[16][17][18][19][20][21]

As a term, socialist economics may also be applied to the analysis of former and existing economic systems that were implemented in socialist states such as in the works of Hungarian economist János Kornai.[22] 19th-century American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker, who connected the classical economics of Adam Smith and the Ricardian socialists as well as that of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Karl Marx and Josiah Warren to socialism, held that there were two schools of socialist thought, namely anarchist socialism and state socialism, maintaining that what they had in common was the labor theory of value.[23] Socialists disagree about the degree to which social control or regulation of the economy is necessary; how far society should intervene and whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change are issues of disagreement.[24] The goal of socialist economics is to neutralize capital, or in the case of market socialism to subject investment and capital to social planning.[25]

  1. ^ Lerner, A. P. (October 1938). "Theory and Practice in Socialist Economics". The Review of Economic Studies. 6 (1). Oxford: Oxford University Press: 71–75. doi:10.2307/2967541. JSTOR 2967541.
  2. ^ Sinclair, Upton (1918). Upton Sinclair's: A Monthly Magazine: for Social Justice, by Peaceful Means If Possible. Socialism, you see, is a bird with two wings. The definition is 'social ownership and democratic control of the instruments and means of production.'
  3. ^ Busky, Donald F. (2000). Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey. Praeger. p. 2. ISBN 978-0275968861. Socialism may be defined as movements for social ownership and control of the economy. It is this idea that is the common element found in the many forms of socialism.
  4. ^ Rosser, J. Barkley Jr.; Rosser, Mariana V. (2003). Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy. MIT Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0262182348. Socialism is an economic system characterized by state or collective ownership of the means of production, land, and capital.
  5. ^ Nove, Alec (2008). "Socialism". The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. pp. 1–18. doi:10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_1718-2. ISBN 978-1-349-95121-5. A society may be defined as socialist if the major part of the means of production of goods and services is in some sense socially owned and operated, by state, socialized or cooperative enterprises. The practical issues of socialism comprise the relationships between management and workforce within the enterprise, the interrelationships between production units (plan versus markets), and, if the state owns and operates any part of the economy, who controls it and how.
  6. ^ Arnold, N. Scott (1998). The Philosophy and Economics of Market Socialism: A Critical Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 8. "What else does a socialist economic system involve? Those who favor socialism generally speak of social ownership, social control, or socialization of the means of production as the distinctive positive feature of a socialist economic system."
  7. ^ Bertrand Badie; Dirk Berg-Schlosser; Leonardo Morlino (2011). International Encyclopedia of Political Science. Sage Publications. p. 2456. ISBN 978-1412959636. Socialist systems are those regimes based on the economic and political theory of socialism, which advocates public ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.
  8. ^ Arneson, Richard J. (April 1992). "Is Socialism Dead? A Comment on Market Socialism and Basic Income Capitalism". Ethics. 102 (3) pp. 485–511.
  9. ^ Lawler, James; Ollman, Bertell; Schweickart, David; Ticktin, Hillel (1998). "The Difference Between Marxism and Market Socialism". Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists. New York; London: Routledge. pp. 61–63. ISBN 0415919665. "More fundamentally, a socialist society must be one in which the economy is run on the principle of the direct satisfaction of human needs. [...] Exchange-value, prices and so money are goals in themselves in a capitalist society or in any market. There is no necessary connection between the accumulation of capital or sums of money and human welfare. Under conditions of backwardness, the spur of money and the accumulation of wealth has led to a massive growth in industry and technology. [...] It seems an odd argument to say that a capitalist will only be efficient in producing use-value of a good quality when trying to make more money than the next capitalist. It would seem easier to rely on the planning of use-values in a rational way, which because there is no duplication, would be produced more cheaply and be of a higher quality. [...] Although money, and so monetary calculation, will disappear in socialism this does not mean that there will no longer be any need to make choices, evaluations and calculations. [...] Wealth will be produced and distributed in its natural form of useful things, of objects that can serve to satisfy some human need or other. Not being produced for sale on a market, items of wealth will not acquire an exchange-value in addition to their use-value. In socialism their value, in the normal non-economic sense of the word, will not be their selling price nor the time needed to produce them but their usefulness. It is for this that they will be appreciated, evaluated, wanted and produced.""
  10. ^ Steele, David Ramsay (1999). From Marx to Mises: Post Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation. Open Court. pp. 175–77. ISBN 978-0875484495. Especially before the 1930s, many socialists and anti-socialists implicitly accepted some form of the following for the incompatibility of state-owned industry and factor markets. A market transaction is an exchange of property titles between two independent transactors. Thus internal market exchanges cease when all of industry is brought into the ownership of a single entity, whether the state or some other organization [...], the discussion applies equally to any form of social or community ownership, where the owning entity is conceived as a single organization or administration.
  11. ^ Bockman, Johanna (2011). Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism. Stanford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-0804775663. [S]ocialism would function without capitalist economic categories—such as money, prices, interest, profits and rent—and thus would function according to laws other than those described by current economic science. While some socialists recognised the need for money and prices at least during the transition from capitalism to socialism, socialists more commonly believed that the socialist economy would soon administratively mobilise the economy in physical units without the use of prices or money.
  12. ^ Lawler, James; Ollman, Bertell; Schweickart, David; Ticktin, Hillel (1998). "The Difference Between Marxism and Market Socialism". Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists. New York; London: Routledge. pp. 60–64. ISBN 0415919665.
  13. ^ Socialist Party of Great Britain. "Socialism and Calculation" (PDF). World Socialist Movement. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 15 February 2010.
  14. ^ Veblein, Throstein (February 1907). "The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 21 (2). Oxford: Oxford University Press: 299–322. doi:10.2307/1883435. JSTOR 1883435.
  15. ^ Roemer, John (1994). "A Brief History of the Idea of Market Socialism". A Future for Socialism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674339460. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  16. ^ Taylor, Fred M. (1929). "The Guidance of Production in a Socialist State". The American Economic Review. 19 (1): 1–8. JSTOR 1809581.
  17. ^ Enrico Barone, "Il Ministro della Produzione nello Stato Collettivista", Giornale degli Economisti, 2, pp. 267–93, trans. as "The Ministry of Production in the Collectivist State", in F. A. Hayek, ed. (1935), Collectivist Economic Planning, ISBN 978-0-7100-1506-8 pp. 245–90.
  18. ^ F. Caffé (1987), "Barone, Enrico", The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, ISBN 978-1-56159-197-8, v. 1, p. 195.
  19. ^ János Kornai (1992), The Socialist System: the political economy of communism, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-828776-6, p. 476.
  20. ^ Mark Skousen (2001), Making Modern Economics, M.E. Sharpe, ISBN 978-0-7656-0479-8,pp. 414–15.
  21. ^ Robin Hahnel (2005), Economic Justice and Democracy, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-93344-5, p. 170
  22. ^ Kornai, János: The Socialist System. The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton: Princeton University Press and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992; Kornai, János: Economics of Shortage. Munich: Elsevier 1980. A concise summary of Kornai's analysis can be found in Verdery, Katherine: Anthropology of Socialist Societies. In: International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Neil Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. Amsterdam: Pergamon Press 2002, available for download.
  23. ^ Brown, Susan Love (1997). "The Free Market as Salvation from Government". In Carrier, James G., ed. Meanings of the Market: The Free Market in Western Culture. Berg Publishers. p. 107. ISBN 978-1859731499.
  24. ^ Docherty, James C.; Lamb, Peter, eds. (2006). Historical Dictionary of Socialism (2nd ed.). Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements. 73. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. pp. 1–3. ISBN 9780810855601.
  25. ^ Schweickart, David (Spring 1992). "Economic Democracy: A Worthy Socialism That Would Really Work". Science & Society. 56 (1): 9–38. JSTOR 40403235. Archived from the original on 11 January 2007.