"Based on a series of articles published under the same title in the Times during ... February 1926"--Preface.

Does the abrupt collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe arise only from errors in implementing the policy of state socialism, leaving the concept itself still a potentially valid one? Bartlomiej Kaminski argues to the contrary: state socialism is a fundamentally defective idea that was well carried out, enabling it to exist until its accumulated shortcomings made its survival extremely difficult. How did the flawed state-socialist system endure for so long? Why is it failing now? In answering these questions, Kaminski, who is both an economist and a political analyst, proposes a general theory and then applies it to the case of Poland. Contending that the breakdown of state socialism results from symbiosis of the state and the economy, the book describes how communist governments searched for tools that would replace the market mechanism and the rule of law. Doomed in advance by the absence of autonomy and competition, this search generated new crises by undermining the state's capacity to suppress individual interests and to direct the economy. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"The search for the Promised Land took socialists in diverse directions: revolution, communes and kibbutzim, social democracy, communism, fascism, Third Worldism. But none of these paths led to the prophesied utopia. Nowhere did socialists succeed in creating societies of easy abundance or in midwifing the birth of a "New Man," as their theory promised. Some socialist governments abandoned their grandiose goals and satisfied themselves with making slight modifications to capitalism, while others plowed ahead doggedly, often inducing staggering human catastrophes. Then, after two hundred years of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in the 1990s in a fin du siecle drama of falling walls, collapsing regimes and frantic revisions of doctrine."--BOOK JACKET.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the structure, conduct, and performance of the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe, the USSR, Communist China and the Marxist LDCs, looking at 26 nations in all. The author focuses on reform, perhaps the most important issue facing countries such as the USSR, Poland, Hungary, and China. Bureaucracy, soft budget constraints, markets, and the nature of the socialist state are the central issues that arise in the course of reforming a socialist economy. The first half of the book deals with 'classical socialism' and provides a theoretical summary of the main features of a now closed period of history. The second half deals with the processes of reform and concludes that the reform of classical socialist systems is doomed to failure as they are unable to renew themselves internally.

The bastard step-child of Milton Friedman and Anthony Bourdain, Socialism Sucks is a bar-crawl through former, current, and wannabe socialist countries around the world. Free market economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell travel to countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, and Sweden to investigate the dangers and idiocies of socialism—while drinking a lot of beer.