Well in the case of Poland, Oskar Lange, Michel Kalecki, Włodzimierz Brus and other Polish Marxist economists certainly pushed for economic reforms that would make us of market mechanisms to make the country's socialist economy more efficient. They had held out great hopes that Gomulka might implement such reforms upon his return to power in 1956 after the outbreaks of unrest. But once Gomulka was safely ensconced back into power, he ignored most of the economists' proposals. Later on Poland would experience other outbreaks of unrest and pressures for economic reforms. Eventually, as the country fell more and more into debt to Western lenders pressure for economic reforms would increase, and the Communists were finally forced to step down in 1989, but the kinds of reforms that were implemented were neoliberal reforms that aimed to restore capitalism to Poland, rather the kinds of reforms that people like Lange, Kalecki, Brus, or Kowalik had championed.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math
---------- Original Message ---------- From: Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Stalinism (was Eric Hobsbawm) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 07:33:05 -0400
I am surprised you mention hayek in this context. The absence of market is the dogma of eastern European thatcherites, but it is just a dogma. They should have read oskar Lange more carefully to know that planned economy can use market mechanism more efficiently than private one. Lange also argued that the problems of ee system was sociological not economic. In other words too much knout for too long created strong path dependence.
Wojtek Sent from my Droid
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