Central Planning and Culture in Francis Spufford’s “Red Plenty”
ABSTRACT
Francis Spufford's Red Plenty embodies the essential issues of the socialist economic calculation debate in a compelling and historically responsible narrative of the Soviet economic experiment of the sixties. Paired with relevant readings from economists, this conference considered not only Spufford's work, but the question of the calculation debate, and the power of economic stories, well told.
READING LIST
From Liberty Fund
Socialism
by
By Ludwig von Mises
Translated by J. Kahane
Foreword by F. A. Hayek
More than thirty years ago F. A. Hayek said of Socialism: “It was a work on political economy in the tradition of the great moral philosophers, a Montesquieu or Adam Smith, containing both acute knowledge and profound wisdom. . . . To none of us young men who read the…
Additional Readings
Hayek, F. A. Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948, 1980.
Kornai, János. Contradictions and Dilemmas: Studies on the Socialist Economy and Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.
Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Spufford, Francis. Red Plenty. London: Graywolf Press, 2012.