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Studies in Econotnics and Russia
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This collection reflects the rather wide range of my interests, from the history of Russian economic thought to the contemporary Soviet scene, as well as questions relating to socialism and the role and limitations of markets. Major changes are taking place in the Soviet Union and in a number of other communist-ruled countries, changes which involve decisive strengthening of market forces and abandonment of the attempt to plan everything from above. However the reformers are frequently unaware of how a real market functions in real capitalist countries, and indeed I have had three articles published in the Soviet Union in 1988 in which I tried to draw attention to 'market' problems, some of which beset (for example) Mrs Thatcher's Britain today. These are also the subject of some of the papers in the present collection. I would particularly draw to the reader's attention my critique of what I call 'fragmentationism', a disease that has actually become worse since I wrote the paper on the subject: to the disruption of urban transportation, the hospitals and school systems, electricity generation, London and the Post Office has now to be added the ambulance service. All this seems to link up with an ideological blind spot peculiar to Britain: the whole is seen as no more than the sum of its parts, and therefore any network can apparently be costlessly broken up. Conservative governments and municipalities in other countries behave quite differently.
Whenever it is relevant I have added a short introduction to the papers here published, if some recent events have rendered their contents significantly out of date. To cite just one example, the paper entitled 'Has Soviet Growth Ceased?' was written at a time when official Soviet publications were claiming a growth rate of around 3 per cent; now it is accepted that these have been years of stagnation, with growth close to zero. (I do not suggest that this is because Soviet statisticians had read my paper!)
There should be something here to interest a wide variety of readers, those who are concerned with political economy in its broadest sense.