Socialism Revised and Modernized

This volume advocates pragmatic market socialism and offers a penetrating critique of the entire range of capitalist apologetics. As James A. Yunker envisions it, pragmatic market socialism would virtually duplicate the everyday economic functions of market capitalist economies, such as the United States' economy. However, public ownership of large, established corporations would enable profits to be distributed among the entire labor force rather than going largely to a class of inheriting rentiers. Pragmatic market socialism would be a means of enhancing economic justice and fairness without sacrificing the efficiency advantages of free enterprise and the market economy.

Yunker presents both theoretical and empirical evidence countering various widely-accepted justifications for capitalism. He argues that much of what passes for anti-socialist thought does not actually address socialism at all but rather the various adverse historical correlates of socialism such as the Communist one-party state, Soviet-style central planning, and the Scandinavian welfare state. This book will be of great interest to economists specializing in comparative economic systems to political scientists with an interest in the evolution of political/economic systems.

JAMES A. YUNKER is Professor of Economics at Western Illinois University in Macomb. His many articles have appeared in publications such as the Annals of Public and Cooperative Economy, the Journal of Economic Issues, and Comparative Economic Studies.