Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives
Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives

Author: Peter J. S. Duncan

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2019-10-14

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1787353834

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In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down. Two years later the Soviet Union disintegrated. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union discredited the idea of socialism for generations to come. It was seen as representing the final and irreversible victory of capitalism. This triumphal dominance was barely challenged until the 2008 financial crisis threw the Western world into a state of turmoil. Through analysis of post-socialist Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as of the United Kingdom, China and the United States, Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives confronts the difficulty we face in articulating alternatives to capitalism, socialism and threatening populist regimes. Beginning with accounts of the impact of capitalism on countries left behind by the planned economies, the volume moves on to consider how China has become a beacon of dynamic economic growth, aggressively expanding its global influence. The final section of the volume poses alternatives to the ideological dominance of neoliberalism in the West. Since the 2008 financial crisis, demands for social change have erupted across the world. Exposing the failure of neoliberalism in the United Kingdom and examining recent social movements in Europe and the United States, the closing chapters identify how elements of past ideas are re-emerging, among them Keynesianism and radical socialism. As those chapters indicate, these ideas might well have potential to mobilise support and challenge the dominance of neoliberalism.

The Socialist Good Life
The Socialist Good Life

Author: Cristofer Scarboro

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2020-06-02

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0253047803

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“First-class, rigorously researched, richly documented, and thought-provoking” essays on the consumer experience in socialist Eastern Europe (Graham H. Roberts, author of Material Culture in Russia and the USSR). As communist regimes denigrated Western countries for widespread unemployment and consumer excess, socialist Eastern European states simultaneously legitimized their power through their apparent ability to satisfy consumers’ needs. Moving beyond binaries of production and consumption, the essays collected here examine the lessons consumption studies can offer about ethnic and national identity and the role of economic expertise in shaping consumer behavior. From Polish VCRs to Ukrainian fashion boutiques, tropical fruits in the GDR to cinemas in Belgrade, The Socialist Good Life explores what consumption means in a worker state where communist ideology emphasizes collective needs over individual pleasures.

Planning in Cold War Europe
Planning in Cold War Europe

Author: Michel Christian

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-10-08

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13: 3110532409

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The idea of planning economy and engineering social life has often been linked with Communist regimes’ will of control. However, the persuasion that social and economic processes could and should be regulated was by no means limited to them. Intense debates on these issues developed already during the First World War in Europe and became globalized during the World Economic crisis. During the Cold War, such discussions fuelled competition between two models of economic and social organisation but they also revealed the convergences and complementarities between them. This ambiguity, so often overlooked in histories of the Cold War, represents the central issue of the book organized around three axes. First, it highlights how know-how on planning circulated globally and were exchanged by looking at international platforms and organizations. The volume then closely examines specificities of planning ideas and projects in the Communist and Capitalist World. Finally, it explores East-West channels generated by exchanges around issues of planning which functioned irrespective of the Iron Curtain and were exported in developing countries. The volume thus contributes to two fields undergoing a process of profound reassessment: the history of modernisation and of the Cold War.

Nationalism and Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Nationalism and Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

Author: W. Kemp

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1999-02-08

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0230375251

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Nationalism and Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union looks at communism's attempts to come to terms with nationalism between Marx and Yeltsin, how the inability of communist theorists and practitioners to achieve an effective synthesis between nationalism and communism contributed to communism's collapse, and what lessons that holds for contemporary Europe.

Social Policy, Poverty, and Inequality in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union
Social Policy, Poverty, and Inequality in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Author: Bob Deacon

Publisher: Ibidem Press

Published: 2019-09-30

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9783838213088

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This book takes stock of the diverse and divergent welfare trajectories of postsocialist countries across central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Authors from different disciplines address key aspects of social protection including health care, poverty reduction measures, labor market policies, pension systems, and child welfare.

Income, Inequality, and Poverty During the Transition from Planned to Market Economy
Income, Inequality, and Poverty During the Transition from Planned to Market Economy

Author: Branko Milanovi?

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780821339947

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World Bank Technical Paper No. 394. Joint Forest Management (JFM) has emerged as an important intervention in the management of Indias forest resources. This report sets out an analytical method for examining the costs and benefits of JFM arrangements. Two pilot case studies in which the method was used demonstrate interesting outcomes regarding incentives for various groups to participate. The main objective of this study is to develop a better understanding of the incentives for communities to participate in JFM.

Advertising and socialism: The nature and extent of consumer advertising in the Soviet Union, Poland
Advertising and socialism: The nature and extent of consumer advertising in the Soviet Union, Poland

Author: Philip Hanson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 125

ISBN-13: 1351696319

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This study looks at the tiny but growing volume of consumer advertising even in countries such as the Soviet Union, which had detailed central planning, and substantially more in the recently decentralised Hungarian economy and pre-invasion Czechoslovakia. And of course, outside the Soviet orbit there was the relatively market-oriented and Westernised Yugoslav economy. This suggested that there were after all some interesting questions to answer: Why did an administrative economy like the Soviet one have any domestic consumer advertising at all, and why was it, apparently, growing? What did evidence from Hungary and Yugoslavia suggest about the scale and functions of advertising in more decentralised socialist economies? This title was first published in 1974.

Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

Author: Hubert Gabrisch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-18

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9780367162580

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This book contains country studies dealing with economic reform projects and with problems of transition from centrally planned to reformed systems - Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. It deals with two special areas of reform: foreign trade and banking system. .

European Socialist Regimes' Fateful Engagement with the West
European Socialist Regimes' Fateful Engagement with the West

Author: Angela Romano

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-08

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780367610104

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This edited volume analyses European socialist countries' strategy of engagement with the West and the European Economic Community in the long 1970s. The book focuses on a time when the socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe banked their hopes for prosperity and stability on enhanced relations with the West. Crossing the traditional differences among diverse fields of historiography, it assesses the complex influence of European and global processes of transformation on the socialist elites' reading of the international political and economic environment and their consequent decision-making. The volume also explores the debate in each country among and within the elites involved in policymaking as they elaborated this strategic view and coped with shortcomings and unexpected turns. A comparative analysis of national cases shows a shared logic and common patterns, together with national variations and a plurality of views on the desirability of exchanges with their capitalist neighbours and on the ways to promote them. The multinational coverage of seven countries makes this volume a starting point for anyone interested in each socialist state's foreign policy, intra-bloc relations, economic strategy, transformation and collapse, relations with the European Community and access to the EU. This book will be of much interest to students and researchers of Cold War Studies, European history, and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at https: //www.routledge.com/European-Socialist-Regimes-Fateful-Engagement-with-the-West-National-Strategies/Romano-Romero/p/book/9780367356170, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.