The Last Page
Levinson, Mark
Forty years ago in Dissent, Irving Howe and Lewis Coser wrote: "To will the image of socialism is a constant struggle for definition." Ever since then one of the distinguishing characteristics...
...Ever since then one of the distinguishing characteristics of Dissent has been that "struggle for definition...
...He described an eclectic system with a core of nationalized industry and a conscious direction of major investment through parliamentary means...
...In the last decade, no one did more to further this discussion than Alec Nove, who passed away in May...
...He was as fierce a critic of laissez-faire economics as he was of the old Soviet model, which he saw as a monstrous perversion of the socialist idea...
...But ultimately the case for socialism will rise or fall on such specific details...
...We honor his memory by attempting to build on his achievement...
...But his book did stimulate an important discussion that continues...
...Although his association with us came late in his life Nove seemed to me very much "of" Dissent...
...Nove's books on the Soviet Union (An Economic History of the USSR and The Soviet Economic System) were translated into many languages and became standard texts...
...Nove's work is, of course, not the last word on the subject...
...Dissent's contributions to that discussion have been collected in a book due out this fall, Why Market Socialism...
...The legacy of Stalinism led the first generation of Dissent editors to wage a bitter fight to reclaim the values of socialism...
...In the last twelve years Nove became a friend of Dissent, appearing in our pages and speaking at a small conference we organized in New York...
...Having to fight this battle meant that little attention was given to the institutional arrangements and social structures that would make up a socialist society...
...Although others have developed alternative models, no one has matched Nove's for empirical detail, clarity, and common sense...
...Voices from Dissent, edited by Frank Roosevelt and David Belkin...
...Income differences would exist, although differences not as extreme as those in America today...
...MARK LEVINSON 576 • DISSENT...
...Private individuals would be free to own businesses...
...This was a moral and political necessity...
...large-scale objectives and a recognition of social costs would guide the public sector...
...For Howe and Coser, utopia had meaning only "if it is an image of social striving, tension, conflict...
...In The Economics of Feasible Socialism Novee put to rest illusions that the market could ever be entirely replaced by a plan, and he showed that a variety of types of property and enterprise are essential to any conception of a democratic socialist society...
...critiques of conventional economics...
...Cooperative forms of economic organization would be encouraged and small entrepreneurship welcomed...
...Of special interest is an essay on the economic mistakes of the Allende regime in Chile, an important, sobering statement on the difficulties of economic transformation...
...In The Economics of Feasible Socialism, Alec Nove outlined that kind of utopia...
...Nove spent most of his scholarly life studying Soviet-style planned economies...
...He also wrote numerous articles on Soviet society, economics, and law...
...Competition and market incentives would guide the activities of the private sector...
...and economic development...
Vol. 41 • September 1994 • No. 4
