This volume examines concepts of central planning, a cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. It revolves around the theory of "optimal planning" which promised a profound modernization of Stalinist-style verbal planning. Encouraged by cybernetic dreams in the 1950s and supporting the strategic goals of communist leaders in the Cold War, optimal planners offered the ruling elites a panacea for the recurrent crises of the planned economy. Simultaneously, their planning projects conveyed the pride of rational management and scientific superiority over the West. The authors trace the rise and fall of the research program in the communist era in eight countries of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, and China, describing why the mission of optimization was doomed to fail and why the failure was nevertheless very slow. The theorists of optimal planning contributed to the rehabilitation of mathematical culture in economic research in the communist countries, and thus, to a neoclassical turn in economics all over the ex-communist world). However, because they have not rejected optimal planning as "computopia," there is a large space left behind for future generations to experiment with Big Optimal Plans anew-based, at this time, on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

This edited volume opening the new series Revisiting Communism: Collectivist Economic Thought in Historical Perspective focuses on the concepts of ownership, the cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. The authors' main objective is to contribute to the still unwritten chapter on collectivism in the history books of modern economic thought. They trace the lengthy evolution of economic ideas of property reform under communism leading from the doctrine of blanket nationalization to projects of moderate privatization in eight countries of Eastern Europe and China. The comparative analysis sheds light upon the tireless attempts of reform-minded economists in communist countries to populate the no man's land of "social property" with quasi-private economic actors such as bodies of workers' self-management and managers of state-owned companies. For a long time, these were expected to crowd out the communist nomenklatura from its actual ownership position without challenging the primacy of collective property rights. The fact that even the most radical reformers came to the conclusion that such surrogate owners would not be able to break the power of the ruling elite only on the eve of the 1989 revolutions demonstrates the immense strength of collectivist ideas. The authors coin the term "trap of collectivism" to warn those demanding nationalization or other forms of non-private ownership today: it is rather easy, even with the best intentions, to walk into this trap but it may take long decades to break out from it.

Prior to the breakdown of communism in the Eastern Bloc, reform minded economists had experimented with the concepts of "market socialism" which presented no real challenge to the basics of the Soviet-type system. However, those same economists are now formulating radical proposals for deregulation, privatization and political democratization. This book tries to understand the intellectual background that changed these "reformers" into "transformers" and examines the problems of managing this dramatic transition. The book demonstrates the rediscovery of economic liberalism in Eastern Europe and provides a fresh look at economics in this area. Contributors include some of the most distinguished economists in Europe and leading policy makers from the post-socialist world including Leszek Balcerowicz, Raimund Dietz and D. Duff Milenkovitch. This book should be of interest to academics and undergraduates in the fields of economics, politics and East European studies.

Includes selected studies on transforming economic cultures in Eastern Europe. Economists, historians, sociologists and anthropologists of the region studied transnational cultural encounters in the post-communist economies by scoping on smaller and bigger firms in the new market conditions, governmental bodies that shaped economic policies and regulations, and the academic settings of economic science. Producers and mediators of economic culture are examined in various contexts. Comparative studies are offered in three areas: entrepreneurship, governance of economic change, and economic knowledge. Case studies analyze country specific issues.

The numbers and scope of encounters between the economic actors of the "East" and the "West" which have dramatically increased during the past two decades are scrutinized. Chapters in the volume reveal how indigenous actors workers, entrepreneurs, government officials, economists, think tank analysts etc. in Eastern Europe, select (accept, adjust and mix) certain cultural packages while rejecting others. Although cultural exchanges are rarely symmetric, there is little to prove that "strong Western" culture devours (civilizes) the "weak Eastern" one, or "clashes of civilizations" drive capitalist transformations in the region.

Brave New Hungary focuses on the rise of a "brave new" anti-liberal regime led by Viktor Orban who made a decisive contribution to the transformation of a poorly managed liberal democracy to a well-organized authoritarian rule bordering on autocracy during the past decade. Emerging capitalism in post-1989 Hungary that once took pride in winning the Eastern European race for catching up with the West has evolved into a reclusive, statist, national-populist system reminding the observers of its communist and pre-communist predecessors. Going beyond the self-description of the Orban regime that emphasizes its Christian-conservative and illiberal nature, the authors, leading experts of Hungarian politics, history, society, and economy, suggest new ways to comprehend the sharp decline of the rule of law in an EU member state. Their case studies cover crucial fields of the new authoritarian power, ranging from its historical roots and constitutional properties to media and social policies. The volume presents the Hungarian "System of National Cooperation" as a pervasive but in many respects improvised and vulnerable experiment in social engineering, rather than a set of mature and irreversible institutions. The originality of this dystopian "new world" does not stem from the transition to authoritarian control per se but its plurality of meanings. It can be seen as a simulacrum that shows different images to different viewers and perpetuates itself by its post-truth variability. Rather than pathologizing the current Hungarian regime as a result of a unique master plan designed by a cynical political entrepreneur, the authors show the transnational dynamic of backsliding - a warning for other countries that suffer from comparable deadlocks of liberal democracy.