Socialist economic development–a review — Michael Roberts

I recently participated in a zoom seminar to review a new book entitled Socialist Economic Development in the 21st Century by Alberto Gabriele and Elias Jabbour. Gabriele is a Senior Researcher at Sbilanciamoci, Rome, Italy and Elias Jabbour is an Assistant Professor at the School of Economics, at Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil.

You can see the comments of the various reviewers (including my own) and the replies of the authors (here). But below is a more considered review of the book. The puff for the book says Gabrieli and Jabbour “offer a novel, balanced, and historically rooted interpretation of the successes and failures of socialist economic construction throughout the last century.”

And as the foreword by Francesco Schettino says, “In this respect, it is interesting to note that about one year ago an internationally renowned economist, Branko Milanovic, published an article in El Pais, arguing that China’s public sector constitutes barely a fifth of the entire national economy, and therefore the PRC is not substantially different from ordinary capitalist countries.”...

Gabrieli and Jabbour are much clearer on the nature of Chinese economy and state.  Their analysis of China is subtle, but it is clearly a robust refutation of Milanovic’s thesis that China is a form of capitalism, albeit run by politicians (?) and not capitalists as in the West....