The People's Republic of Walmart

The People's Republic of Walmart
Author: Leigh Phillips
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 178663516X

Are multi-national corporations like Walmart and Amazon laying the groundwork for international socialism? For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.

The Plans That Failed

The Plans That Failed
Author: André Steiner
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2013-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 178238314X

The establishment of the Communist social model in one part of Germany was a result of international postwar developments, of the Cold War waged by East and West, and of the resultant partition of Germany. As the author argues, the GDR’s ‘new’ society was deliberately conceived as a counter-model to the liberal and marketregulated system. Although the hopes connected with this alternative system turned out to be misplaced and the planned economy may be thoroughly discredited today, it is important to understand the context in which it developed and failed. This study, a bestseller in its German version, offers an in-depth exploration of the GDR economy’s starting conditions and the obstacles to growth it confronted during the consolidation phase. These factors, however, were not decisive in the GDR’s lack of growth compared to that of the Federal Republic. As this study convincingly shows, it was the economic model that led to failure.

Restructuring the Soviet Economy

Restructuring the Soviet Economy
Author: David A. Dyker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2002-01-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134917465

Restructuring the Soviet Economy examines the Soviet leadership's most urgent question - how to revitalize the soviet economy. David Dyker argues that the current impasse can can only be understood in the context of the failure of 60 years of central planning. He analyses both the problems besetting the centrally planned system and those that have paralysed perestroika and assesses whether the most ambitious attempt ever to reform the Soviet economy will succeed.

Obstacles to Transforming Centrally-Planned Economies

Obstacles to Transforming Centrally-Planned Economies
Author: Mr.Jacob A. Frenkel
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 19
Release: 1991-07-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1451848722

This paper identifies obstacles hindering the transformation of centrally-planned economies (CPEs) into well-functioning market economies. The obstacles identified relate to (i) anticipatory dynamics, (ii) monetary overhang and the budget, and (iii) underdeveloped credit markets. It is demonstrated that these obstacles inhibit the effectiveness of price reform, monetary and credit policies, and trade liberalization. The analysis focuses on various ways to remove the obstacles. In this regard, a special examination is made of the implications of “cleaning” the balance sheets of enterprises and banks from nonperforming loans, as well as ways to enhance credibility. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of sequencing, “safety nets,” and their associated obstacles.

The Labour Party and the Planned Economy, 1931-1951

The Labour Party and the Planned Economy, 1931-1951
Author: Richard Toye
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0861932625

An exploration of Labour's 1931 pledge to create a planned socialist economy and the reasons for its failure to do so. In the general election of 1931, the Labour Party campaigned on the slogan "Plan or Perish". The party's pledge to create a planned socialist economy was a novelty, and marked the rejection of the gradualist, evolutionary socialism to which Labour had adhered under the leadership of Ramsay MacDonald. Although heavily defeated in that election, Labour stuck to its commitment. The Attlee government came to power in 1945 determined to plan comprehensively. Yet, the aspiration to create a fully planned economy was not met. This book explores the origins and evolution of the promise, in order to explain why it was not fulfilled. RICHARD TOYE lectures in history at Homerton College, Cambridge.

Measuring National Income in the Centrally Planned Economies

Measuring National Income in the Centrally Planned Economies
Author: William Jefferies
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2014-11-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317594924

In 1991 "Communism" collapsed. The cold war was over and the West had won. Whole cities, Moscow, St Petersburg, Warsaw, Beijing, Budapest and Bucharest, whole countries indeed, were privatised for nothing or next to nothing. This was probably the greatest expansion of the world market in history. And yet, according to national income measurements of the CIA, OECD, World Bank and IMF, this gigantic expansion of market production, led to a decline in market production in the very countries where it was introduced. How to explain this paradox? This book traces the origin of the West’s national income measurements, from their origin in the 1923/4 Balance developed in the USSR, to the USA in the early 1930s via two Soviet exiles, Simon Kuznets and Wassily Leontief, and then back to the USSR again, after a vigorous debate, through a protégé of Kuznets, Abram Bergson. The AFC imputed national incomes to a centrally planned economy, based on physical not income measurements. This book provides a detailed assessment of the failure of the AFC method to measure the real growth of actual market production during the transition period. This book provides a detailed account of the application of national income measurements to the centrally planned economies. It assesses all of the major contributors to this debate, including Colin Clark, Naum Jasny, Alexander Gerschenkron, G.Warren Nutter and Abram Bergson. It provides a new much higher, estimate of the expansion of market production during the transition period, based on an estimate of the actual growth of real market production. It discusses the very significant implications of this re-estimate for contemporary theories of globalisation.

Central Planning

Central Planning
Author: Jan Tinbergen
Publisher: New Haven : Yale University Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 1964
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Government economic planning - the impact on economic development, the social implications and the best techniques of centralization. Comparison (18 tables) of planning processes. Bibliography pp. 143-146.

Plans and Disequilibria in Centrally Planned Economies

Plans and Disequilibria in Centrally Planned Economies
Author: W. Charemza
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2014-06-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1483297470

The purpose of this study is to investigate interrelations between planning mechanisms and disequilibria in a case where the planning decisions are centralized and are exogenously given to enterprises. The first introductory chapter is intended to provide an understanding of Poland's economic situation during the period under research. In the next five chapters the basic model, describing the households-planners relations in terms of consumption, labour, money and plans are derived, estimated, used for calculation of excess demands, for simulation of some monetary policies, and, finally, for providing optimal control experiments in which consumption excess demand is minimized on a reasonable level of the consumption volume. In the next two chapters the basic model is gradually extended, and the last chapter summarizes the results by formulating a more effective macroeconomic policy.

The Reformation in Economics

The Reformation in Economics
Author: Philip Pilkington
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2016-12-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319407570

This book carves the beginnings of a new path in the arguably weary discipline of economics. It combines a variety of perspectives – from the history of ideas to epistemology – in order to try to understand what has gone so wrong with economics and articulate a coherent way forward. This is undertaken through a dual path of deconstruction and reconstruction. Mainstream economics is broken down into many of its key component parts and the history of each of these parts is scrutinized closely. When the flaws are thoroughly understood the author then begins the task of reconstruction. What emerges is not a ‘Grand Unified Theory of Everything’, but rather a provisional map outlining a new terrain for economists to explore. The Reformation in Economics is written in a lively and engaging style that aims less at the formalization of dogma and more at the exploration of ideas. This truly groundbreaking work invites readers to rethink their current understanding of economics as a discipline and is particularly relevant for those interested in economic pluralism and alternative economics.