Stiglitz on Socialism

[Justin Schwartz]

>
>Joseph Stiglitz, Whither Socialism?  I included this book on a syllabus 
>because I thought I had to.  In a course called Alternatives to Global 
>Capitalism, this was supposed to be the socialism-is-dead book.  Stiglitz 
>does mouth that conclusion in a couple of places, but the argument runs in 
>a completely different direction:  Lange-Lerner style market socialism 
>won't work because, in aping markets, it apes all of the forms of market 
>failure.  Ninety percent of this work is a destruction of neoclassical 
>economics from within.  John Roemer praised it in NLR a few years back, but 
>then half took it because Stiglitz wasn't neoclassical enough for his 
>taste!
>
>Michael McIntyre
>

Yeah, it's a good book, except that S doesn't realize that Lange wasn't 
advocating market socialism but planned socialism with shadow prices that 
tracked market prices, and that Hayek anticipated his criticisms of 
neoclassical economics by 55 years. jks

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