Communist Planning versus Rationality
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€122.99
A32=Andrei Belykh
A32=Gergely Kohegyi
A32=Julius Horvath
A32=János Matyas Kovács
A32=Kaloyan Ganev
A32=Maciej Bukowski
A32=Roumen Avramov
A32=Valentin Cojanu
A32=Xiuli Liu
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B01=János Matyas Kovács
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBLW
Category=JPFC
Category=JPFF
Category=KC
Category=NHB
central planning
Cold War
Communist economics
computopia
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Eastern Bloc
economic history
economic thought
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Language_English
market Socialism
mathematical economics
PA=Available
planned economy
Price_€100 and above
PS=Active
Socialist Calculation Debate
softlaunch
Soviet-type economies
Product details
- ISBN 9781793631770
- Weight: 794g
- Dimensions: 160 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 14 Apr 2022
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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This volume examines concepts of central planning, a cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. It revolves around the theory of “optimal planning” which promised a profound modernization of Stalinist-style verbal planning. Encouraged by cybernetic dreams in the 1950s and supporting the strategic goals of communist leaders in the Cold War, optimal planners offered the ruling elites a panacea for the recurrent crises of the planned economy. Simultaneously, their planning projects conveyed the pride of rational management and scientific superiority over the West. The authors trace the rise and fall of the research program in the communist era in eight countries of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, and China, describing why the mission of optimization was doomed to fail and why the failure was nevertheless very slow. The theorists of optimal planning contributed to the rehabilitation of mathematical culture in economic research in the communist countries, and thus, to a neoclassical turn in economics all over the ex-communist world). However, because they have not rejected optimal planning as “computopia,” there is a large space left behind for future generations to experiment with Big Optimal Plans anew—based, at this time, on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
János Mátyás Kovács is honorary professor at Eötvös Lorand University, senior member at Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at University of Vienna, permanent fellow emeritus at Institute for Human Sciences, and visiting professor at Central European University.
