Following the collapse of hither too existing socialism in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. There was a crisis in socialist economic thought. If we contrast the situation of the 1990s with what had existed 40 years earlier, we see that whilst in the 1950s, socialism and economic planning were almost universally accepted, even by enemies of socialism, as being viable ways to organize an economy,...

This paper offers additional insights on the interactions between economics and politics in Portugal. We use an unexplored data set consisting of monthly polls on vote intentions for the main political parties in Portugal, since 1986. Results indicate that: (1) socialist governments had less electoral support than social democratic governments; (2) social democratic governments enjoyed a honeym...

With the fall of the Socialist block in 1989, the Cuban national economy collapsed, followed by a severe scarcity in gasoline, materials and especially food. Of Alamar, a New Town socialist housing project under construction in East Havana, only the areas dedicated to dwelling were finished, leaving the neighbourhood without a defined public space or economic centre. Due to the limited transpor...

It must seem to many people that the collapse of the Soviet Union (and the planned economies of Eastern Europe) effectively ends the socialist calculation debate, with a decisive verdict in favour of the market. We argue that this conclusion is unwarranted. Soviet socialism presented a specific form of planning with definite shortcomings of its own, and its collapse need not rule out alternativ...

For the first thirty years after the triumph of his revolution, Fidel Castro championed Cuba as a model socialist society. Gone were the casinos, the bootlegging Americans, the mafia, and the brothels they frequented. Socialist society, he claimed, is superior to capitalism. Girls do not have to sell themselves for money in Cuba’s new society. Women gain liberation through socialism. They have ...

This contribution to Science & Society's special issue on socialist economic organisation brings together the basic model proposed in Devine (1988) and subsequent work developing and elaborating that model (Adaman and Devine 1994, 1996, 1997, mimeo; Devine 1992, 1997, forthcoming). It is part of a project which is designed to assist in the revival of the movement for socialism by developing a w...