Books in Brief: Alienation and the Soviet Economy

Alienation and the Soviet Economy, by Paul Craig Roberts (University of New Mexico Press, 121 pp., $6). The uncritical acceptance by Western observers of the supposed achievements brought about by central planning in the Soviet Union is subjected to a devastating critique in this short but powerful collection of scholarly essays. Roberts, a student of Michael Polanyi’s, conclusively shows that the only serious attempt to impose a true Marxian scheme of economic organization in Russia was during the War Communism period of 1918-1920, and that was a catastrophic failure, by Lenin’s own admission. Since that time the Soviet economy has been characterized by “polycentricity” (in contrast to the hierarchical structure which true Marxian planning calls for). It cannot be otherwise, Roberts demonstrates, for although the planning authority may have political power to intervene directly into the affairs of all firms, it is practically impossible to exercise this power over more than a small fraction of enterprises at any one time. Quoting the Hungarian economist Liska, Roberts notes that the true primary function of the planning bureaucracy is to direct its activities to overcoming the problems created by its own existence. The most important contribution made by Roberts in this gem of a book is his carefully documented indictment of most Western scholarship concerned with Soviet economics, a scholarship which “has been effective in producing interpretations that provide historical justification for every turn of Soviet events and in blinding the world to the important role played by folly in Soviet experience.”