Yakov Kronrod was a leading figure of the Soviet economic school of so-called marketeers (tovarniki) and a major participant in the debates about economic reform in the 1960s, as Soviet planners discussed whether to accord a greater role to market relations within the framework of the planned, nationalized economy.
Kronrod was born in 1912 and attended university during the 1930s. After completing his studies, he began working in the state planning and statistics agencies. When Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, he immediately volunteered and fought in the battle of Moscow, ending the war in East Prussia with the rank of major.
After the war, he headed the theoretical section of the prestigious Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a position he occupied until his punitive demotion in the late 1960s. Revisiting Kronrod’s life and ideas can give us a fresh perspective on the rise and fall of the Soviet economic system, the most ambitious attempt to build an alternative to Western-style capitalism.
Going against Marxist orthodoxy, Kronrod argued that socialism is a separate mode of production, not merely communism in a still immature state. Under socialism, market relations necessarily retain an important role, because socialism inherits from capitalism an unequal society in which resources are limited: while citizens are equal as co-owners of the economy, their practical roles in the economy place them in unequal situations. This society is a long way from genuine social equality, the overall goal of socialism, when scarcity will have been overcome and work will have become its own incentive.
Going against Marxist orthodoxy, Kronrod argued that socialism is a separate mode of production, not merely communism in a still immature state.
At the same time, Kronrod insisted on the primacy of planning under socialism and of the direct, nonequivalent allocation of resources. He was a fierce opponent of the Yugoslav model, in which enterprises…
Auteur: David Mandel
