Friday, September 09, 2011

Pg. 99: Johanna Bockman's "Markets in the Name of Socialism"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism by Johanna Bockman.

About the book, from the publisher:
The worldwide spread of neoliberalism has transformed economies, polities, and societies everywhere. In conventional accounts, American and Western European economists, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, sold neoliberalism by popularizing their free-market ideas and radical criticisms of the state. Rather than focusing on the agency of a few prominent, conservative economists, Markets in the Name of Socialism reveals a dialogue among many economists on both sides of the Iron Curtain about democracy, socialism, and markets. These discussions led to the transformations of 1989 and, unintentionally, the rise of neoliberalism.

This book takes a truly transnational look at economists' professional ideas over 100 years across the capitalist West and the socialist East. Clearly translating complicated economic ideas and neoliberal theories, it presents a significant reinterpretation of Cold War history, the fall of communism, and the rise of today's dominant economic ideology.
Learn more about Markets in the Name of Socialism at the Stanford University Press website.

Johanna Bockman is Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Affairs in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University.

The Page 99 Test: Markets in the Name of Socialism.

--Marshal Zeringue