Włodzimierz Brus and the Law of Value Under Socialism
Polish Marxism after Luxemburg
ISBN: 978-1-80117-891-4, eISBN: 978-1-80117-890-7
Publication date: 9 December 2022
Abstract
This paper surveys the intellectual trajectory of the Polish political economist Włodzimierz Brus, who took up the arguments for use of the ‘price mechanism’ in socialism from the pre-War work of Oskar Lange. Brus advanced the idea that a ‘Law of Value’ applied under socialism, which would allow prices and appropriate material incentives to bring the socialist economy into equilibrium. Kalecki, however, opposed the use of cost-minimising incentives, and Brus never fully resolved the problem of how investment is to be guided in a decentralised way. A lively discussion of ‘market socialism’ did not survive the 1960s. In exile from 1972, Brus participated in China's post-Mao discussions on economic reform. But his interest in prices and markets under socialism ceased effectively with the fall of Communism at the end of the 1980s.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
The author of this paper draws on the author's PhD thesis, and earlier writings on Brus and market socialism (Toporowski, 1982, 1995, 2007) in which he made use of his conversations with Włodzimierz Brus, Jerzy Osiatyński and Isabella Weber. Financial support from the Leverhulme Trust and the Institute for New Economic Thinking for this research is acknowledged. Comments by Grzegorz Konat on an earlier draft were especially helpful in the detail of this paper.
Citation
Toporowski, J. (2022), "Włodzimierz Brus and the Law of Value Under Socialism", Toporowski, J. (Ed.) Polish Marxism after Luxemburg (Research in Political Economy, Vol. 37), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 173-185. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0161-723020220000037011
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023 Jan Toporowski. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited