This is the first book in English to present a succinct overview of the influential work of Russian economist Yakov Abramovich Kronrod (1912–1984) on the political economy of socialism. Kronrod headed the theoretical section of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of the USSR in the 1970s until the authorities decided that his ideas were dangerous, banning Kronrod's publications until his death in 1984. Kronrod argued that while national ownership and democracy are the dominant relations of socialism, commodity-market relations nevertheless have an important role to play in the planned economy. This stunning, revelatory book includes a first translation of one of Kronrod's key essays, 'Socio-oligarchism—Pseudo-Socialism of the Twentieth Century' and introduces Kronrod's thought to the English-speaking world for the first time.
David Professor Mandel
David Mandel is Professor of political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He studied sociology and Russian studies at the Columbia University in New York. He has also taught at the Centre for Russian and Eastern European Studies, Birmingham, U.K. Previous books include The Petrograd Workers and the Russian Revolution (Feb. 1917-June 1918), Chicago Haymarket, 2018. Democracy, Plan, and Market: Yakov Kronrod’s Political Economy of Socialism, ibidem-Verlag Stuttgart, 2017.
Yakov Kronrod
| Delivery time | Delivery time 2-3 working days. |
| Number of Pages | 140 |
| Format | 8,3 in x 5,8 in |
| Type | Paperback |
| Language | English |
| Publication date | 30.09.2017 |
| ISBN | 978-3-8382-1008-7 |
| Weight | 215 g |
| Product safety information (EU GPSR) | read more |
“Since Marx’s dismissal of tinkering with the ‘cook-shops of the future’, socialists have largely set aside what socialism might actually look like. But with the defeats and integration of the working class into capitalism, the parallel defeats of the left and the failed attempts at alternatives to capitalism through the 20th century and into the 21st, a powerful sentiment to ‘naturalize’ capitalism has taken hold—there is, even critics assume, no other way to organize a complex, developed society. In this context, convincing others that capitalism is not the end of history demands a return to defending the plausibility of a socialist society. David Mandel’s rediscovery and presentation of the work of the iconoclastic Soviet political economist Yakov Kronrod—whose grounded lessons from the failure of the Soviet experience are systematically rooted in the absence of the deepest democracy—soberly and creatively reopens this crucial question of socialism’s viability. For those hoping to rejuvenate the socialist idea, Mandel’s book is a timely, absolutely-must-read.“—Sam Gindin, author of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (2012)
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