The list of readings and final exam for Abram Bergson’s Harvard course “Normative Aspects of Economic Policy” (1960) were posted earlier. In this post Economics in the Rear-view Mirror provides the course outline and assigned readings for his “Economics of Socialism”. I encountered his 1961 book The Real National Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928 in four of my courses (taught by Raymond Powell and John Michael Montias at Yale; Evsey Domar at M.I.T.; and from Bergson himself at Harvard).
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HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Department of Economics
Economics 1200:
Economics of Socialism
Spring Term, 1976-77
Professor Bergson
Note
The following will be the principal texts for the course:
Abram Bergson, The Economics of Soviet Planning, Yale, New Haven, Conn., 1964.
Nai-Ruenn Chen and Walter Galenson, The Chinese Economy Under Communism, Aldine, Chicago, 1969
Joel B. Dirlam and James L. Plummer, An Introduction to the Yugoslav Economy, Merrill, Columbus, Ohio, 1973.
Paul R. Gregory and Robert C. Stuart, Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, Harper and Row, New York, 1974.
Note that the Bergson, Gregory and Stuart, and Dirlam and Plummer books are available in paperback.
Items Marked with an asterisk are optional.
I. Introduction
- What is Socialism?
“Socialism” (by Daniel Bell), in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 14, 1968, pp. 506-516.
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, International Publishers, 1938, pp. 3-23.
V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution, Ch. 5, “The Economic Base of the Withering Away of the State.”
Paul M. Sweezy, “Alternative Conceptions of Socialist Development” (Processed).
Alec Nove, “Market Socialism and Its Critics,” Soviet Studies, July 1972.
II. Comparative Development Strategy
- The Soviet Model
Gregory and Stuart, Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, Chs. 1-3, 12 (pp. 417-428 only).
A. Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, London, 1969, Chs. 6-8.
A. Erlich, “Preobrazhenski and the Economics of Soviet Industrialization,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 1950.
I.V. Stalin, “On the Grain Front,” “Right Danger,” “Right Deviation,” in Selected Writings, New York, 1942.
- Variants
Oleg Hoeffding, “Soviet State Planning and Forced Industrialization as a Model for Asia,” Problems of Communism, Nov.-Dec., 1959; reprinted in F. Holzman, Readings on the Soviet Economy, Chicago, 1962.
Chen and Galenson, The Chinese Economy under Communism, Chs. 1, 2.
A. Eckstein, China’s Economic Development, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1975, pp. 9-22, 47-51.
See Sweezy under Topic 1.
III. Economic Organization and Planning
- Socialist Planning: Contents and Issues
O. Lange “On the Economic Theory of Socialism” including Appendix, in B. Lippincott ed., On the Economic Theory of Socialism, Minneapolis, 1938; New York, 1964.
A. Bergson “Market Socialism Revisited,” Journal of Political Economy, October 1967 (Section on “Cooperative Variant” optional).
W. N. Loucks, Comparative Economic Systems, 7th ed., New York, 1965, pp. 108-120 (5th ed., pp. 98-110; 6th ed., pp. 93-105).
Joan Robinson, An Essay on Marxian Economics, 2nd ed., New York, 1966, pp. 10-28.
Note: As a preliminary to the foregoing readings, you may wish review relevant theoretic foundations in, say, Robert Dorfman, Prices and Markets, New Jersey, 1967, Chs. 7-8.
- Centralist Planning in the USSR: The Industrial Enterprise and Collective Farm
Bergson, The Economics of Soviet Planning, Ch. 5 and pp. 287-297; Chs 9 and 10.
J. Berliner The Innovation Decision in Soviet Industry, Cambridge, Mass., 1976, Chs. 14-16.
Gregory and Stuart, Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, Chs. 7 (pp. 232-253), 10.
D. Granick*, “Managerial Incentives in the USSR and in Western Firms,” Journal of Comparative Administration, August 1973.
Emily C. Brown, Soviet Trade Unions and Labor Relations, Cambridge, Mass., 1966, Chs. 7, 9.
E. G. Liberman*, Economic Methods and the Effectiveness of Production, New York, 1973, pp. 21-47.
- Centralist Planning in the USSR: Coordination
Bergson, Economics of Soviet Planning, Chs. 1, 3,4, 7, 8,(*) 11.
Liberman*, Economic Methods and the Effectiveness of Production, pp. 75-116.
H. S. Levine, “Pressure and Planning in the Soviet Economy,” in H. Rosovsky, ed., Industrialization in Two Systems, New York 1966; reprinted in M. Bornstein and D.R. Fusfeld, eds., The Soviet Economy, 3rd ed., Homewood, Ill., 1970.
G. Grossman*, “Scarce Capital and Soviet Doctrine,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 1953, reprinted in Holzman, Readings.
A. Nove, The Soviet Economy, New York, 1961, Rev. ed., Ch. 3, Ch. 7 (pp. 231-240).
R. W. Campbell, “Marx, Kantorovich, and Novozhilov,” in Slavic Review, October 1961; reprinted in H. Schaffer, The Soviet Economy, New York, 1963; and in George Feiwel, New Currents Soviet-Type Economies: A Reader, Scranton, PA, 1968.
G. Schroeder, “The 1966-67 Soviet Industrial Price Reform,” Soviet Studies, April 1969.
H. Kohler, Welfare and Planning, New York, 1966, pp. 82-95, 102-105.
M. Goldman, “Externalities and the Race for Economic Growth in the USSR: Will the Environment ever Win?” Journal of Political Economy, March/April 1972.
- Market Socialism in Hungary and Yugoslavia
Bela Balassa. “The Firm in the New Economic Mechanism in Hungary,” in M. Bornstein, ed. Plan and Market, New Haven, Conn., 1973.
D. Granick, “The Hungarian Economic Reform,” World Politics, April 1973, reprinted in M. Bornstein, ed., Comparative Economic Systems, 3rd ed., Homewood, Ill., 1974.
J. Vanek, The Participatory Economy, Ithaca, New York, 1971, Chs. 2-3.
Dirlam and Plummer, An Introduction to the Yugoslav Economy Chs. 2, 3, 4 (pp. 88-99), 5 (pp. 122-141), 7 (pp. 165-177).
D. D. Milenkovich, Plan and Market in Yugoslav Economic Thought,New Haven, Conn., 1971, pp. 187-211.
D. D. Milenkovich*, “Plan and Market: The Case of Yugoslavia” (Processed).
- Planning in China: How Different?
Chen and Galenson, The Chinese Economy Under Communism, Ch. 6
Barry Richman. “Capitalists and Managers in Communist China,” Harvard Business Review, January/February 1967.
D. Perkins, “Industrial Planning and Management,” in A. Eckstein, W. Galenson and T. C. Liu, eds., Economic Trends in Communist China, Chicago, 1968.
Eckstein, China’s Economic Development, Ch. 12.
IV Foreign Economic Relations
- Foreign Economic Relations
F. D. Holzman, Foreign Trade Under Central Planning, Cambridge, Mass., 1974, Chs. 2, 6 (analysis of Fig. 6.1, p. 146 and section on foreign trade discrimination, pp. 150-152 are optional).
F. L. Pryor, The Communist Foreign Trade System, Cambridge, Mass., 1963, Chs. 1, 5 (pp. 131-139).
E. A. Hewett, Foreign Trade Prices in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Cambridge, Eng., 1974, Ch. 2.
R. F. Dernberger, “Prices, the Exchange Rate and Economic Efficiency in the Foreign Trade of Communist China,” A. A. Brown and E. Neuberger, eds., International Trade and Central Planning, Berkeley, California, 1968.
V. Performance
- Comparative Productivity and Growth
S. Cohn, Economic Development in the Soviet Union, Lexington, Mass., 1970, Chs. 4, 6.
A. Bergson, Planning and Productivity Under Soviet Socialism, New York, 1968 Chs. 1-3.
R. W. Campbell, Soviet Economic Power, 2nd ed. Boston, Mass., 1966, Ch. 6.
A. Bergson “Development Under Two Systems: Comparative Productivity Growth Since 1950,” World Politics, July, 1971; reprinted in Bornstein, Comparative Economic Systems, 3rd ed.
B. Ward, “Capitalism vs. Socialism: A Small Country Version,” in G. Grossman, ed., Essays in Socialism and Planning in Honor of Carl Landauer, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Chen and Galenson, The Chinese Economy Under Communism, Ch. 9.
Eckstein, China’s Economic Development, Ch. 1.
John G. Gurley, “Capitalist and Maoist Economic Development,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, April-July 1970, pp. 42ff.
Reading Period:
Wage Determination and Inequality
Bergson, The Economics of Soviet Planning, Ch. 6.
Bergson, The Structure of Soviet Wages, Cambridge, Mass., 1944, Chs. 2, 13, 14.
M. Matthews*, “Top Incomes in the USSR: Towards a Definition of the Soviet Elite,” Survey, Summer, 1975.
Charles Hoffman, “Work Incentives in Chinese Industry and Agriculture,” in Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, An Economic Profile of Mainland China, Vol. 2, Washington, D.C., February 1967.
Convergence?
J. K. Galbraith, The New Industrial State, Boston, 1967, Ch. XXXV.
Bertram Wolfe, “Russia and the USA: A Challenge to the Convergence Theory” and J.K. Galbraith, “Reply,” American Humanist, September/October 1968.
Peter Wiles, “Convergence: Possibility and Probability” in Balinky et al., Planning and the Market in the USSR, Rutgers, 1967.
Source: Personal copy of Irwin Collier.
Portrait of Abram Bergson. See Paul A. Samuelson, “Abram Bergson, 1914-2003: A Biographical Memoir”, in National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, Volume 84 (Washington, D.C.: 2004).