"For, as we have seen, if socialization cannot be achieved by a great and bold stroke, the government has to give up its socialist aims altogether" (ibid, p.126).
It was pretty amusing to hear various neoliberal talking heads on the Polish TV parroting the same argument - sans theoretical justifications, just a bunch of anecdotes and parables about driving on left or right side of the road or jumping over a ravine - in favor of privatization.
Wojtek
On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 2:59 PM, farmelantj at juno.com <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
>
>
> Lange laid that out in On the Economic Theory of Socialism
> in the section titled, "On the policy of transition." Also,
> available in the book Economic Theory and Market
> Socialism: Selected Essays of Oskar Lange,
> ed. Tadeusz Kowalik (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1994).
>
> BTW a friend of mine with whom I have been working
> on pieces on F.A. Hayek and also on the socialist
> calculation debates between both Hayek verrsus Otto Neurath,
> and Hayek versus Lange, met Kowalik at a conference
> several years ago, and has kept in occasional contact
> with him by phone and email.
>
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
>
> ---------- Original Message ----------
> From: Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] sachs and poland
> Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 13:23:40 -0500
>
> Michael: "Sachs would visit Poland briefly many times, and his main
> role was to create a favorable background for the great jump"
>
> [WS:] This is not to defend Sachs, but the big jump argument was very
> popular in Eastern Europe at that time. Even more peculiar is the
> fact that this argument is borrowed (without proper credits) from
> Oskar Lange, who staunchly defended superiority of socialism over
> capitalism. Lange argued that transition from capitalism to socialism
> must be made at once to avoid serious disruptions of the production
> during the transition.
>
> Autres temps, autres moeurs. But it does support Corey Robin's
> argument that reactionaries sponge off their tactic from
> revolutionaries.
>
> Wojtek
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