John E. Roemer is Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Stout Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University.
Roemer says it’s always been assumed that markets only worked with
private ownership. His book, A Future for Socialism, challenged
that. Writing after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, he
wanted to see whether he could formulate an alternative to
unbridled capitalism—so he combined a free market and centralized
control. ‘Firms would be neither private nor public,’ he says.
Instead the nature of ownership would alter so that every citizen
was, in some way, a shareholder… This may seem unusual, he says,
but it’s not unknown: ‘Alaska has it for the oil fields that are
owned by the state. Every citizen of Alaska gets a royalty cheque
each year… It’s your right while you are a citizen of Alaska.’ In
his socialist state, companies would compete with each other, and
workers would be able to move from job to job. There could even be
incentives for managers (larger salaries, bonuses, other perks),
Prof. Roemer believes, ‘assuming that’s what the labour market
would pay them.’
*Globe and Mail*
Roemer is perhaps the most interesting reexpositor of Karl Marx
around.
*Boston Globe*
[Roemer] has important, innovative, powerfully argued ideas for
sweeping political and economic reform.
*New Statesman & Society*
Roemer offers an innovative and controversial definition of
socialism… As an intervention in the public debate about what
economic system we should collectively aspire toward, A Future for
Socialism succeeds brilliantly. A focus on the main issues,
theoretical imagination, distillation of complex ideas to an
accessible core, plus clarity and parsimony of expression are its
key strengths. Reading this book will surely bolster the confidence
of socialists and might even spur foes of socialism to seek the
most humane possibilities available under the capitalist economic
system.
*American Political Science Review*
The Left is in vital need of bold and creative new thinking on the
question of the institutional conditions for radical egalitarian
alternatives to capitalism… John Roemer, an eminent, left-wing
mathematical economist, has produced an extremely interesting and
innovative example of this kind of thinking in his book A Future
for Socialism. In it Roemer elaborates a model for how institutions
could be designed so as to make market socialism a sustainable—and
desirable—way of organizing an economy… At the core of the analysis
is a deeply sociological idea: Property relations shape the
distribution of resources and power in ways that bear
systematically on the normative consequences of actors’ strategies.
Roemer is one of the most original thinkers working on these kinds
of questions. Sociologists interested in broad questions of social
justice, equality, and large-scale social change will be well
served to study this work carefully.
*Contemporary Sociology*
[A] timely and important effort to rekindle the fundamental debate
over the possibility and desirability of socialist economic
organization that has been so fruitful a source of economic
theories and insights in the 20th century. Roemer writes with a
sophisticated understanding of subtle economic points and an
enviably lucid and concise style. This book would be an excellent
supplement to undergraduate economic theory courses, reviewing a
wide range of basic political economic concepts such as efficiency
in allocation, principal-agent conflicts, theories of income
distribution and technological innovation, and models of the
political process, in the context of a concrete and compelling
discussion of an important political–economic issue. Roemer puts
forward a market-oriented model of socialism in which a
private-enterprise sector of small privately held firms co-exists
with a market-socialist sector of large publicly held and financed
firms… One does not need to agree with Roemer’s estimate of the
relative merits of capitalism and socialism to find food for
thought and discussion in his critical analysis of the fundamental
economic issues involved.
*Journal of Economic Literature*
Measured, highly accessible, and most of all compelling.
*Samuel Bowles*
Essential reading for those interested in rethinking the
foundations of the socialist project and for those with a more
academic interest in the relationship between forms of property
relations and economic institutions.
*Eric Olin Wright, University of Wisconsin*
John Roemer argues that socialism is about equality, that a
democratic market socialism represents the best hope for achieving
equality, and that the failure of the Soviet-style planned
economies does not defeat that hope.
*Joshua Cohen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology*
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