1st Edition

Efficiency and Justice in the Industrial World: v. 1: The Failure of the Soviet Experiment

By Dusan Pokorny Copyright 1993

    In the last years of the Soviet Union, with remarkable suddenness, it became commonplace to observe that what the country needed was a free market, private property and integration into the global economy. But why (aside from the obvious fact that the alternative was failing) should this consciousness dawn in our day? This book argues that the time has come to reflect on what the epochal events of our era are teaching us about larger questions - the relationship between economy and society, culture and market. Dusan Polorny asks precisely these questions, revisiting the ideas of classic and contemporary philosophers in the light of the failure of the Soviet order and the exigencies of post-Soviet transformation. As Pokorny also points out, integration in a post-industrial global economy entails profound changes in the domain of property rights, a redefinition of the relation between equity and efficiency, and a regrounding of national consciousness. The present volume examines the implications of these demands for the post-Soviet societies; another, on the European and North American experiments in economic integration, is in preparation.

    Featuring contributions by some of the leading experts in Korean studies, this book examines the political content of Kim Jong-II's regime maintenance, including both the domestic strategy for regime survival and North Korea's foreign relations with South Korea, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States. It considers how and why the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) became a "hermit kingdom" in the name of Juche (self-reliance) ideology, and the potential for the barriers of isolationism to endure. This up-to-date analysis of the DPRK's domestic and external policy linkages also includes a discussion of the ongoing North Korean nuclear standoff in the region.

    Biography

    After the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Dušan Pokorný emigrated to Canada, where he became Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of Toronto. His articles on interactions between philosophic and economic thought have appeared in The Canadian Journal of Economics, History of Political Economy, and The Philosophical Forum. Among the books to which he contributed essays on the development of nations, states, and markets are Democratic Theory and Technological Society (M.E. Sharpe, 1988) and Socialist Dilemmas: East and West (M.E. Sharpe, 1990).