The Way to the Socialist Planned strongEconomystrong - HETSA.pdfVIP

The Way to the Socialist Planned Economy Marek Breit and Oskar Lange Translated by Jan Toporowski* Abstract : This is the first English translation of a 1934 article by Marek Breit and Oskar Lange on the economics of socialism. Breit and Lange advocate a form of market socialism based on self-managed workers’ cooperatives, with membership open to all who wish to join. 1 The Breakdown of the Capitalist Economy Otto Bauer said not very long ago that ‘the fall of the second workers’ government in England, the events of recent years, and especially in the current year in Germany, mark the end of an epoch and the start of a new one in the history of the international workers’ movement. We find ourselves at the start of a period of severe, protracted economic crises, broken only by short moments of respite; a period in which the proletariat will rather be convinced of how narrow are the boundaries with which the world capitalist economy limits the possibilities for liberation of the working class, and how these binding constraints may only be 1 removed together with the whole capitalist system.’ Essentially the world-wide economic crisis, the likes of which the capitalist economy has not experienced since its beginnings, shows the complete bankruptcy of the capitalist economic system. Nothing so demonstrates that complete bankruptcy, the total breakdown of the capitalist economy, as the co-existence of poverty with excess that is met at every step. When the masses of the people in the capitalist economies are oppressed by unprecedented poverty, stores are packed with goods for which there a