Socialism after Communism

Christopher Pierson assesses the evidence of terminal decline, but finds rather a whole series of deep-seated challenges to traditional forms of socialist and social democratic thinking. Above all, these problems are to be found in the political economy of social democracy and its commitment to incremental change in the context of an increasingly globalized market economy.

The latter chapters of the book are devoted to an assessment of market socialism, one of the most vigorous and innovative attempts to seek to recast socialist aspirations under these quite changed circumstances. In essence, market socialism represents an attempt to reconcile new forms of social ownership with the seeming ubiquity of the market. Having outlined this position, Pierson carefully and systematically critiques it and, in the process, develops a set of distinctive arguments about the nature of social ownership, the potential of the labor-managed economy, and the appropriate forms for an extension of economic democracy.

“In this well-written and scholarly book, Christopher Pierson, after an extraordinarily detailed and comprehensive survey of the ideas and models of ‘market socialists’ and their critics from both left and right, concludes with a critical rejection of ‘market socialism’ as an inadequately specified and/or misnamed vision in theory, and an infeasible political strategy for the left in advanced capitalist countries in practice.”—Science and Society

“A compulsively readable as well as persuasive book. Pierson’s argument, which is scholarly, patient, and provocative all at once, ranges authoritatively over an impressive array of sources. The book advances the level of theoretical discussion thoroughly and commendably.”—Paul Thomas, University of California, Berkeley

Christopher Pierson is Reader in Politics at the University of Stirling. He is the author of Beyond the Welfare State? (Penn State, 1992) and Marxist Theory and Democratic Politics (1986).

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