Markets in the Name of Socialism The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism [Paperback]

The worldwide spread of neoliberalism has transformed economies, polities, and societies everywhere. In conventional accounts, American and Western European economists, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, sold neoliberalism by popularizing their free-market ideas and radical criticisms of the state. Rather than focusing on the agency of a few prominent, conservative economists,Markets in the Name of Socialismreveals a dialogue among many economists on both sides of the Iron Curtain about democracy, socialism, and markets. These discussions led to the transformations of 1989 and, unintentionally, the rise of neoliberalism.This book takes a truly transnational look at economists' professional outlook over 100 years across the capitalist West and the socialist East. Clearly translating complicated economic ideas and neoliberal theories, it presents a significant reinterpretation of Cold War history, the fall of communism, and the rise of today's dominant economic ideology. This book makes a brilliant argument that is of great interest to anybody who wonders about the political impact of economic theoryin the nature of different forms of socialism, in the interpretation of the East European transformation since 1989, and in the future fundamentals of policy. This is a daring and well-researched book of breathtaking scope. The author has delved into no less than 100 years of transnational economic discussions that span several continents and politico-economic systems in at least 4-5 languages, drawing on published sources, primary archival materials, and on numerous interviews conducted over a 14 year period. The book presents a bold, counter-intuitive, and original thesis that is destined to attract a lot of attention. Neo-liberalism, it argues, is not simply the enemy, inverse, and grave-digger of socialism; in fact, it is a parasite that originated in the debate with, about, and within socialism. Challenging conventional accounts,Markets in thlCÁ