Re: Re: Schweickart on Yugoslavia

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 23:03 18/07/00 -0500, you wrote:
> Chris wrote that the Yugoslav experience contradicted all of
> Vanek's conditions and gave four examples.

I was entirely quoting Schweickart. I am sorry that was not clear. However
Schweickart was basing his observations on Vanek. The references are to an
article in the  1990 May issue of Economic and Industrial Democracy, "On
the Transition from Centrally Planned to Democratic Socialist Economies"

I did wonder how robust the conclusions were. I am interested that Paul
Phillips argues there were weaknesses but they were rather different, and
also in his argument that "contractual socialism replaced market socialism".


It seems highly likely that inefficient firms were allowed to stay in
production instead of being liquidated and releasing their resources for
other enterprises. Even if this is done humanely under socialism (with
planned retraining etc) it would seem an inescapable necessity if there is
any sort of market.

I also find plausible the criticism that there was no private market in
land use, so that the state did not automatically get extra revenue from
areas that were growing economically. The transfer of funds from these
areas to the slowly developing areas was therefore always politically
controversial.

Interestingly as socialist a person as Ken Livingstone as the new Mayor of
London has already started to complain that London is subsidising the rest
of England.

Chris Burford

London