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Gorbachev′s vision of democratic, decentralised and market‐oriented socialism has generated diverse and controversial perceptions in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev′s claim that the USSR is not retreating from socialism but advancing towards it, having dismantled the Stalinist Command model, is assessed.

The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: how do business and political (i.e. party politics and state) networks relate? What are the consequences of the relations between these two networks for the behaviour of the actors involved?

The research design consists of the historical approach based on relevant literature sources of the past, a relatively long period – from 1968, the beginning of the era of market socialism, until the first decade of the twenty-first century, by which time the market economy had been established for more than 20 years. The authors analyse the behaviour of economic and non-economic actors in Hungary based on cases and historical data, applying the IMP network approach.

Research findings demonstrate the long-term influence of the relation between business and bureaucratic networks on managerial and organizational network behaviour. The old and new pictures of the economic system are different, but the background to the pictures and the movement in the two pictures are quite similar.

The historical illustrations and cases the authors have presented cannot be too widely generalized: the characteristics of the Hungarian mode of transition from market socialism to market economy impose important limitations on the generalizability of the findings.

The study offers lessons to policy makers: policy decisions can have long term, unanticipated impacts on non-target areas as well.

The results confirm that the informal networks of socialism can replicate themselves and network structures can be repurposed in the system after the transition as well.

One contribution of the paper is related to the second network paradox: the cases illustrate non-business relationships with non-economic factors, particularly relations with bureaucracy. The other contribution is the description of how the transition from socialism to capitalism affected the networks that firms were embedded in before and after the transition.

Extensions/applications/revisions of the Marxian vision of socialism can broadly be categorized into two polar strands: the centralized and the decentralized strands of socialist economic systems. Explores the main postulates of a decentralized version of a socialist economic system as provided by Kautsky, Luxembourg, Bernstein, Bukharin and Lange. The centralized strand of socialist economic systems has been elaborated drawing mainly from the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, Dobb, Sweezy and Baran.

When Stalin, in 1936, declared socialism achieved in the Soviet Union, he opened the door for the codification of the political economy of socialism beyond Marx’s political economy of capitalism. Indeed, at the same time as he executed the tyrannical policies he is known for, he led a series of private conversations with economists about a textbook on the political economy of socialism that spanned nearly 20 years. In these conversations, Stalin repeatedly argued for an open debate and against dogmatism. Most notably, he accepted the existence of the so-called law of value in socialism, which appears to subject the state to scientific authority. Reconstructing these conversations, we show that his claim to a pluralist scientific debate helped paper over his tyranny, first by diverting attention from the real issues, second by establishing his personal authority as an intellectual, and third by creating conflicts that would exclude his opponents.

This article investigates the intellectual roots of perestroika. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the architect of perestroika claims that his programmes and policies are aimed at a revolutionary transformation of the Soviet economy from an overly centralised command system of management to a democratic system based mainly on economic methods and on an optimal combination of centralism and self‐management. To facilitate the restructuring process, Gorbachev simultaneously initiated two sweeping political reforms: glasnost (no “radical change is possible without it”); and demokratizatsiya (”there is no present‐day socialism, nor can there be, without democracy”). Therefore, prominent features envisaged by perestroika would presumably include: an optimal combination between centralism and self‐management, that would imply decentralisation in the economic management of the country; replacement of administrative methods by economic methods, that would emphasise economic incentives and market processes more than machineries of central planning; democratisation and openness in Soviet society, aimed at guaranteeing greater democratic rights for citizens, and pluralism in governmental and political processes.

The purpose of this second part of this special issue is to contribute to a better understanding of the nature of Soviet society. It is not possible to analyse such a society in all its complexities within the space of one study. There are, however, some economic relations which determine society's major features. We believe that commodity‐production relations in the Soviet Union are of this type.

Western economics came into being with the rise of the capitalist market economy. It had a nature of duality beginning from its birth: the justificativeness of providing theoretical pillars for the capitalist market economy system and the scientificity of revealing the internal relations and operating rules of the capitalist market economy. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

However, after the 1830s, this justificativeness gradually evolved into vulgarity. Since the 1930s, modern western mainstream economics has mainly explored the general market economy on the assumption that the capitalist system remains unchanged, and many outcomes of such research are positive and beneficial.

Political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, at the present stage, is mainly a Chinese socialist market economics. It is guided by the Marxist political economy and rooted in the great practice of China’s reform and opening up and socialist modernization.

According to political complexion, western economic theories can be divided into political economic theory, mainstream economic theory and basic economic theory. By subjecting these theories to what we term “elimination,” “transformation” and “transplantation” surgeries, respectively, we can absorb and accommodate their beneficial elements in building a political economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which in turn is conducive to the development and prosperity of such an economy.

Provides an overall assessment of problems and prospects for socialism (at a time of the abolition of the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and creation of a new “Commonwealth of Independent States”) by examination of three central themes. First, it is shown that because the old Soviet regime departed substantially from the classic conceptualizations of socialism, its demise does not demonstrate a “failure” of socialism or a “victory” of capitalism. Second, dissolution of the old regime does demonstrate serious problems in the actual, over‐centralized, authoritarian, state‐directed Soviet economy. Third, partly because of the confusion between an authentic socialism and the actual Soviet regime, prospects for socialism seem very slim. But socialist ideals of democracy and equality are deeply embedded in the popular psyche and will continue to affect the character and pace of social change.

According to the traditional Soviet view, the Soviet economic society, based essentially on governmental and collective farm property and overall national planning, is “socialist”, and has been so since Stalin's proclamation to that effect in the 1930s. Most Western observers, Marxist and non‐Marxist, recognise these two socio‐institutional features of the Soviet politico‐economic system and ascribe substantial importance to them. Beyond this point, interpretations differ considerably. Five alternative views may be distinguished. These contending perspectives argue that Soviet economic society is:

It was not until the late 1960s that housing attracted much attention from academic social scientists. Since that time the literature has expanded widely and diversified, establishing housing with a specialised status in economics, sociology, politics, and in related subjects. As we would expect, the new literature covers a technical, statistical, theoretical, ideological, and historical range. Housing studies have not been conceived and interpreted in a monolithic way, with generally accepted concepts and principles, or with uniformly fixed and precise methodological approaches. Instead, some studies have been derived selectively from diverse bases in conventional theories in economics or sociology, or politics. Others have their origins in less conventional social theory, including neo‐Marxist theory which has had a wider intellectual following in the modern democracies since the mid‐1970s. With all this diversity, and in a context where ideological positions compete, housing studies have consequently left in their wake some significant controversies and some gaps in evaluative perspective. In short, the new housing intellectuals have written from personal commitments to particular cognitive, theoretical, ideological, and national positions and experiences. This present piece of writing takes up the two main themes which have emerged in the recent literature. These themes are first, questions relating to building and developing housing theory, and, second, the issue of how we are to conceptualise housing and relate it to policy studies. We shall be arguing that the two themes are closely related: in order to create a useful housing theory we must have awareness and understanding of housing practice and the nature of housing.