Description
Book SynopsisBernie Sanders' socialist advocacy in the United States, communist China's economic successes and a Marxist revival are inspiring many to muse about improved strategies for building superior socialist futures. Socialist Economic Systems provides an objective record of socialism's promises and performance during 18202022, identifies a feasible path forward and provides a rigorous analytic framework for the comparison of economic systems.
The book opens by surveying pre-industrial utopias from Plato to Thomas More, and libertarian communal designs for superior living. It plumbs all aspects of the revolutionary and democratic socialist political movements that emerged after 1870 and considers the comparative economic, political and social performance of the USSR and others from the Bolshevik Revolution onwards. The book also provides case studies for all revolutionary MarxistLeninist regimes, and supplementary discussions of Mondragon cooperatives, Israeli kibbutzim, No
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables, Acknowledgements, Preface, Executive Summary, Methodology, Introduction, Part I Socialist Cross Currents 1820-1920, Chapter 1 Utopia, Chapter 2 Libertarian Socialism, Chapter 3 Socialist Utopian Fiction, Chapter 4 Marxist-Leninism, Part II Marxist-Leninism 1917-1991, Chapter 5 Bolshevik Revolution, Chapter 6 Planning, Chapter 7 Perestroika, Chapter 8 Worker Self-Management, Chapter 9 Maoism, Chapter 10 Castroism, Chapter 11 Reform Communism, Chapter 12 World Communism, Chapter 13 Dystopian Socialist Fiction, Chapter 14 Crimes against Humanity, Chapter 15 Oblivion, Part III Post Command Planning, Chapter 16 Chinese Market Communism, Chapter 17 Democratic Socialism, Chapter 18 Anarcho-Socialism, Chapter 19 New Age Planning, Chapter 20 Egalitarian Socialism, Chapter 21 Japanese Communalism, Chapter 22 Twenty-first Century Socialism, Conclusion, Appendix 1 Bergson’s Systems Function, Appendix 2 Marx, Lenin and Stalin, Appendix 3 Marxist Economics, Appendix 4 Perfect Competitive Benchmark, Appendix 5 Soviet Statistics, Index
