Why the Socialists Always Turn out to Be the Losers?
Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) at the University of Economics 2008
Dzintra Atstāja, Ivars Brīvers

Ideas of socialism have been attractive for many people in all the times and countries. The principle, that wealth can be acquired not only by work, but also from interest from capital has been considered unjust. Nevertheless a lot of theoretical concepts from Utopian ideas of R.Owen to scientifically based model of socialism of K.Marx have suffered a defeat when embodying them in real life. Deep and fundamental criticisms of socialism can be found in works of Austrian economists in the XX century. Ludwig von Mises asserted the impossibility of calculations in socialism. Joseph Schumpeter explained that entrepreneur spirit is a factor that ensures a higher efficiency of economy. The discussion about the best system seems to be concluded. The real life proved the socialist system to be less efficient than the economy driven by the market forces. But the example of the Soviet Union shows, that a good market economy is better than a bad planned economy. From this one cannot conclude that a good market economy is certainly better than a good planned economy. May be it is hastily to junk the socialism?


Keywords
socialism, Austrian economists, market economy, entrepreneur spirit.
Hyperlink
http://www.eshet.net/conference/paper_management.php?p=27

Atstāja, D., Brīvers, I. Why the Socialists Always Turn out to Be the Losers?. In: Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) at the University of Economics, Czech Republic, Prague , 15-17 May, 2008. Prague: ESHET, 2008, pp.2-12.

Publication language
English (en)
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