Populating no man's land : economic concepts of ownership under communism
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Populating no man's land : economic concepts of ownership under communism
(Revisiting communism : collectivist economic and political thought in historical perspective)
Lexington Books, c2018
- : cloth
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This edited volume opening the new series Revisiting Communism: Collectivist Economic Thought in Historical Perspective focuses on the concepts of ownership, the cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. The authors' main objective is to contribute to the still unwritten chapter on collectivism in the history books of modern economic thought. They trace the lengthy evolution of economic ideas of property reform under communism leading from the doctrine of blanket nationalization to projects of moderate privatization in eight countries of Eastern Europe and China.
The comparative analysis sheds light upon the tireless attempts of reform-minded economists in communist countries to populate the no man's land of "social property" with quasi-private economic actors such as bodies of workers' self-management and managers of state-owned companies. For a long time, these were expected to crowd out the communist nomenklatura from its actual ownership position without challenging the primacy of collective property rights. The fact that even the most radical reformers came to the conclusion that such surrogate owners would not be able to break the power of the ruling elite only on the eve of the 1989 revolutions demonstrates the immense strength of collectivist ideas. The authors coin the term "trap of collectivism" to warn those demanding nationalization or other forms of non-private ownership today: it is rather easy, even with the best intentions, to walk into this trap but it may take long decades to break out from it.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why Ownership? Why Communism?
by Janos Matyas Kovacs
Chapter 1: From Nationalization to Nowhere. Ownership in Bulgarian Economic Thought
(1944-1989),
by Roumen Avramov
Chapter 2: From Control of the 'Commanding Heights' to Control of the Whole Economy and
Back. Chinese Ownership Theories Since 1949,
by Fan Shitao
Chapter 3: From Nationalization to Privatization. Understanding the Concept of Ownership in
Czechoslovakia (1948-1990),
by Julius Horvath and Vitezslav Sommer
Chapter 4: Ownership under East-German Communism-A One-Way Street,
by Hans-Jurgen Wagener and Franz Rudolph
Chapter 5: From Two to One (And Only)? Theorizing Ownership in Communist Hungary,
by Janos Matyas Kovacs
Chapter 6: From Soviet-type Ownership through Self-Management to Privatization. Debating
Ownership in Communist Poland,
by Maciej Tyminski
Chapter 7: The Silence of the Herd. Exploring Ownership Concepts in Communist Romania,
by Radu Ioan Simandan, Gabriel Claudiu Mursa and Vlad Pasca
Chapter 8: Fighting Dogma, Rescuing Doctrine. Toward a History of Ownership Debates in
Soviet Economic Literature,
by Oleg Ananyin and Denis Melnik
Chapter 9: Social Property and the Market. An Uneasy Symbiosis in Yugoslavia,
by Joze Mencinger
Conclusion: Expeditions to No Man's Land. Comparing Economic Concepts of Ownership
under Communism: An Evolutionary View, by Janos Matyas Kovacs
About the Contributors
by "Nielsen BookData"